What You Believe Matters - a personal story
The Hidden Enemies
The Hidden Enemies
Today we will start a new, short series to explore things that are enemies of God. As we grow and learn about the history and teachings of the Christian faith, it’s good to understand the things that wage war against our own hearts and minds, especially hidden things that we may not be aware of.
Today’s Verse and Thought
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”(John 14:27)
Searching for truth
God’s Word tells us that He provides His children with peace. Over and over we read verses assuring us that He wants us to live in peace.
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”(Romans 15:13)
When I look back on my life, I realize that many of my early years lacked peace. The path of my young adulthood was an uphill struggle and dangerously close to the edge most days.
I grew so used to uncertainty and upheaval, I actually felt unsettled when the chaos subsided, not trusting that something else wasn’t just around the corner to upset the brief calm.
I often thought about the old cultural adage that “bad things” always happen in threes. If problems came back to back, I anticipated the third shoe to drop at any time. So I “knocked on wood” that I wouldn’t “jinx” it and hoped there wasn’t a third event waiting just around the corner.
And when things grew exceptionally hard, I would resort to prayers of desperation and Bible verses for comfort. In my young mind, I sifted through all the lessons from growing up in church and tried to apply them to my situation as if there were some kind of recipe or formula for peace.
What we believe matters - even if it seems silly or unimportant - stop knocking on wood
During my twenties I had an older friend who I thought was kind of a “super Christian” - especially since her husband was our Bible study leader. She told me that bad things happened because of our own fears.
I remember she quoted a verse from Job: “For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.”(Job3:25). Her interpretation of this verse was that Job’s problems happened because of his fears.
Job “manifested” his own misery.
She also told me when people prayed for healing, but it didn’t happen, it was because they lacked faith. So basically, she believed that all the “bad things” that had happened in life were a person’s own doing. Translated: I had problems because I didn’t have enough faith. And because she was older and seemed to be a mature Christian, I assumed she knew the truth.
“The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”(Luke 17:5)
I know my friend’s words were meant to be helpful back then, but it confused me, and it just added to my desperation and guilt. When the next “bad thing” happened, I was sure that it was all my fault and somehow I could have prevented it, if only I had been a “better” Christian.
Having a solid background of “works-based” faith, I accepted that all my difficulties must be my fault. God was punishing me. This was something I struggled with from childhood and prior church teachings.
The deception of works-based religion
Several years prior to knowing this friend, when I was seventeen, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Somehow, I thought it was my fault because my mom told me that one of the main causes of cancer was stress. When my dad was diagnosed, I was a great source of stress for my parents.
I was one of those teen pregnancy stories with a boyfriend who tried to run away from it. I pleaded with him to come back when I found him hitchhiking on the highway out of town just before our wedding.
A few months before my high school graduation, we found out my dad was sick, and was given six months to live. I was certain it happened because I had caused him stress and God was punishing me for what I did.
I prayed a lot that year. I remember reading Mark 11:24:”Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” I tried as hard as I could to “believe in faith” that my dad would live.
And then I read James 6:1-7: “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord…” So when doubts came in I grew anxious that I was failing in my faith.
My dad died a year later.
I thought at the time it was because I didn’t pray enough and that I had doubted. My family moved across country after he died, and I was left alone with a baby; a husband who never wanted to be married; and a very twisted theology.
Confused
Years after my dad’s death, I continued searching for God’s truth. When I met a Pentecostal friend. It was the early 1980s and Pentecostal tele-evangelists were growing in popularity. Her religion seemed very lively compared to Catholics and Baptists. They all taught faith in Jesus Christ, but seemed to have unique rules to each.
The 1980s was an era in US Christianity that sadly did little good to God’s reputation (or the Gospel) as men and women took to the airwaves and spouted their Christian formulas for success.
It’s very similar to New Age teaching that you can “manifest” good things in your life simply by thinking it or wishing it. Just put “good vibes” out into the universe and good will come back. It was similar to what my friend believed, only without a Christian spin.
What stole my peace?
My friend was unknowingly an enemy of my faith, I just didn’t know it at the time. In those years I spent hours a week listening to televangelists give their recipes for faith, salvation, and wealth as I sought truth and peace in my life. The thing that always ensured success was a 10% tithe to their cause.
By this time I was a full-on BaptaCathoCostal. I thought that all these people that taught me about God were all much holier than me. I reflected back on my youth in the Catholic services (even though I didn’t understand the Latin) and it all seemed very serious and high and holy. They must be close to God.
And then all the Baptist people were always talking about all the sins we were to avoid - drinking, smoking, dancing, sex - all the things that tempted youth - and I assumed that these people were also super-Christians. They all appeared to be “holy people” who could recite Bible verses on command. I never saw any of them with a beer or cigarette. I was Especially intimidated by the kids in my youth group who I saw carrying their Bibles around at school. They were not very nice to me, but they were very righteous acting. They must know the truth.
And then later I met my Pentecostal friend who seemed to be in the inner circle of the Holy Spirit. It was like she found the entrance to the Holy of Holies. Her husband explained verses in ways I had never heard of before and Pentecostalism seemed so emotionally powerful and alive. They too must know the truth of holy living.
The worst enemy of all was my own assumptions
I was my own worst enemy for not seeking God as much as I did spending time listening to people in those years.
I always knew and believed that Jesus loved me and saved me, but I never was quite sure if I was going to “lose” my salvation as my churches warned. Would I become a backslider? Was I going to commit that one final sin that would send me to hell forever? How can one ever have peace in God unless we reached some sort of state of ongoing perfection? After all, holy perfection was the goal, right?
“You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”(Matthew 5:48)
Because I didn’t have enough faith; or I didn’t recite enough Scripture; or I kept being tempted and falling into sinful actions and attitudes; or because I didn’t yet speak in tongues or experience a miracle - I thought that I was a substandard Christian.
I kept sinning even when I tried really really hard not to. I certainly wasn’t willing to give up my whole life - like all the lauded missionaries who went to faraway dangerous jungles to spread the gospel; or the nuns who sacrificed their lives to feed all the starving children. I was truly conflicted about my own holiness in these years. My peace was MIA.
I tried to read scriptures on my own but often got tripped up by the “thees” and “thous” and the weird imagery - especially in the Prophetic books. In my younger days, I didn’t realize that many of my teachers were probably as uninformed as I was.
Having come out of a dual background of Catholic and Baptist and going to a Pentecostal church in my twenties, my confusion was justified. My peace was constantly disturbed not only by life’s events, but by my constant focus on my sins and how to get rid of them.
The day it all changed - It’s not about me. Jesus came to give us LIFE
In my 30s, another friend introduced me to yet a different teaching. One that I had never heard in any other church. It became a pivotal moment in my faith. This friend was the pastor of our house church. He introduced me to Jesus in a new way.
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”(John 10:10).
All the years prior, I was experiencing a dead, works-based kind of Christianity. All the thoughts about works, sin, doubt, church rituals, lack of faith, lack of faithful church attendance, it all kept killing the peace and joy that God wanted me to have.
Every one of these things always kept my eyes on me; not on Jesus. All my actions to try and correct my sinfulness kept me focused on my behavior, and my constant failures, not on Jesus’ finished work on the cross.
My churches taught me self-righteousness, not perfection in Jesus’ righteousness.
Good news for the captives
“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners…”(Isaiah 61:1).
As a Christian, I was still a prisoner of sin in my mind. That’s not exactly good news or a way to have peace. It was captivity. Not because I wasn’t a believer in Jesus Christ, but because I was bound up in the weight of the Law due to all the erroneous teachings from churches that used the Law against me.
For the first time in my life, I felt freedom. And that freedom lead to having a new kind of peace that I hadn’t known up to that time.
Jesus came to give us life. Not only our blessed hope of eternal life when we die, but also life while we’re here on earth. Before this, I was always ashamed of myself whenever I prayed to God because I wasn’t “perfected” in my own moral behavior.
If I had continued following my Catholic teaching, I could have at least gone to confession, said my “Hail Marys” and taken holy communion that week. I could be free of my sin… for that week at least. God help me if I were to die on a Wednesday though! But hey, there was still one last hope for all those who were in purgatory working all that out.
As a Baptist, I could have gone down to the altar call and repented of my backsliding ways so that I could once again try - for the next seven days - to live a good life. I always left church on Sunday with such good intentions, but as life happened during the week, I once again arrived at the weekend needing to repeat the process.
As a Pentecostal, I could have sought church members to lay hands on me and release me from the evil I had brought on my self that was gripping my soul. At least until the next time when I would once again have to “confess my sins” to elders in my church so that I could be healed from my self-manifested attacks and work to increase my faith.
I was my own worst enemy
I didn’t know it at the time. I just thought I was seeking how to be the “perfect Christian.” While this is a compacted version of those years, what I eventually came to realize was it isn’t about me. As I sought peace in my life, I thought I had to be “doing” something to “make” it happen.
What I didn’t understand was the perfect love my Savior has for me. Even today it is so hard to wrap my mind around how much we are truly loved.
When Jesus said “it is finished” it was His statement on the wages of sin that is death. He was paying the price so that I could have the free gift of God. I can’t earn it. I can’t work for it. I can’t maintain it by my pious ways. That’s just a sneaky form of pride that makes us think that we can make ourselves clean somehow. If that were so, why would Jesus have had to die? If we could accomplish it by our works Jesus suffered and died for nothing.
No it isn’t a “license to sin” so just calm down with that argument.
No it doesn’t mean we never “work” to do good in this life so put that silly thought away.
No I don’t mean to demean or belittle anyones faith. You are God’s servant, not mine.
No I don’t advocate for not going to church either.
It’s a lifetime journey
“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”(Philippians 2:12)
The thing that I misunderstood most was that salvation is a process. We are saved by grace in Jesus by believing in the finished work on the cross. That is our Salvation. That is the good news. We are not condemned. And that promise is unconditional.
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,”(Romans 8:1)
That sets us free from the penalty for all kinds of sin like greed, anger, pride, jealousy, bitterness, hatred, and especially fear.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”(1 John 4:18)
To live in God’s love is the path on the narrow road where we walk with God and work all this stuff out for our entire lives. It isn’t a Sunday Jesus fix or a blessing by a priest. It is our lifetime, moment by moment journey walking with God where His “rod and staff” comfort and discipline us and keep us from falling off the cliff.
None of us are in the exact same place as our friends or family, but we can all encourage one another to just sit with the Lord and seek His ways. Not out of guilt and shame, but out of gratitude.
One of the greatest lessons that came from all those years of struggle was how much I knew I was a sinner who couldn’t do it on my own.
I had no power to be righteous apart from Christ. Not for my salvation, nor for my walk. I could only surrender it all to Him because He loved me and wanted to help me find peace in Him. It just took a few years to get there.
“Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.” (Luke 7:47).
What you believe matters. Your theology can bring life, or it can bring death to yourself and others. It’s a hidden enemy that holds us captive to sin and beholding to church systems.
Some of the things we believe in could be killing the very thing we so desperately want. True peace in Jesus isn’t found in “calm” circumstances like I thought; it’s found in the middle of the raging waters of life when our faith causes us to sink in doubt and Jesus comes along and says “Peace. Be still.”
In this world we are promised that we will all have trouble. But in the truth of Jesus, we overcome all of it. There is a peace that isn’t like what the world gives. It is the true peace of God that is found in the freedom to rest in the finished work of Christ.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”(Romans 6:23)
Today’s Question
Verses to Explore
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”(Matthew 5:9)
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”(Matthew 10:34)
“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”(Luke 2:14)
“Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.”(Luke 12:51)
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1)
“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”(John 16:33)
Today’s Prayer
Father I’m so thankful for all the struggles I’ve had. I wish I had spent my younger days understanding what it was you were offering, but I listened to religions that brought death to me; not life. I thank you so much that you forgive all that I have done and all that I have yet to do. I want to live a life of gratitude and love for the true gift that I could never earn or keep earning.
Thank you Father for peace. Thank you for leading me and guiding me even when I went off on my own and got lost in the wilds and you guided me back. Thank you for all the blessings you have given me. Thank you for all the lessons I have learned. I’m so sorry that I spent all those years thinking I could “do” something to earn your peace. I just didn’t know. And Father, I especially pray for all the people in my life - especially my own children - who I influenced in their faith. I pray for anyone who I may have caused harm in their own walk with you. I pray that you will override it and lift them up to a place of true peace and joy in you. Not in a religious system, but in your true love for them. It is all about you. I love you Father. May all our lives be for your glory, honor and praise. Amen.❤️