Drink from Your Well

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of hearing from God personally instead of worshiping other human beings.

We do worship other human beings. We may not get on our knees and call them God, but we give them respect and praise only God deserves. We trust them in ways in which we should only trust God. We give them a degree of obedience and service no man should receive.

One of the main reasons God was willing to come to earth and allow human beings to torture him to death was to give us the ability to connect with him directly, without the need for priests and so on. We obsess on salvation and, if we’re charismatics, wealth, but almost all Christians ignore the changes the Holy Spirit wants to make in us right here on earth.

We don’t like God’s plan. We don’t want to hear from a spirit. We always want a god we can see. It’s human nature. Human beings chose Saul, a venal and unsuccessful king, over the word of God that came to prophets and priests. We have a long history of worshiping rocks, statues, trees, the dirt, deformed children, animals…anything we can see or touch.

What happens when someone hears from God and opens his mouth? If he’s lucky, most people will reject him. If he’s very unlucky, people will exalt him and try to turn him into a god. They did this to Paul and Barnabas, calling them Mercury and Jupiter. Here, we do it by telling the Pope, “You can’t go around dressed like everyone else. Let me make you a crazy hat that makes you look seven feet tall. Let us give you bizarre robes that make you look like a comic book character. We’re going to build a mansion for you so you don’t have to be contaminated by contact with people who aren’t worthy. We’re going to give you armed guards and middlemen to protect your privacy.” We do it to televangelists by driving hundreds of miles to hear their nonsense, and by giving them our retirement money. Somehow we confuse white trash with the Lord.

Preachers love this system. If you can charm people with your words, you will never have to do anything productive as long as you live. You’ll die rich no matter how bad your advice is. You’ll have an endless stream of income, because whenever you go bust, people will blame the devil. They’ll keep giving. People will think you’re so valuable, nothing you do justifies cutting you off.

Exalted preachers don’t teach us how to do God’s will, because they have no idea what it is, and because it would interfere with their supply of free money. What they do is a business, not a calling. They’re not anointed.

Preachers are supposed to show us how to be taught by God, directly. Then they’re supposed to step out of the way and give God the primary role in your development. If you’re still sitting under a preacher after five years, listening to his every word without questioning it, you’re a failure. A year or two into it, you should be hearing from God on your own, and if the preacher screws up, you should know, because the Holy Spirit will tell you.

Preachers do screw up. None of them are reliable. When they screw up, it hurts people’s faith. People feel as if God has failed, because they conflate God and preachers.

When you develop a real prayer life, you will hear from God all day. Listening to preachers will become tiresome, because most of the time, they’ll be telling you something you already know or something you know is wrong. You end up trying to sift through the confusion, and it takes time away from you so you can’t dwell on the pure information you get from the original source.

Here’s an illustration God gave me. Imagine there is only one well. Somebody somewhere gets a bucket to bring you water from the well. He carries it a hundred feet, and then he pours the water into someone else’s bucket, and that person carries it a while.

By the time it gets to you, it has been in a hundred buckets, and every bucket had some dirt in it. You get filthy water with all sorts of adulterants in it. That’s what life is like when you depend on preachers. One hears from God, another copies him, another copies that one, and every preacher in the chain of custody adds more dirt to the message.

Eventually you end up worshiping saints or telling people they’re not allowed to eat shellfish.

The crucifixion gave you access to the well. Forget the guys with the buckets.

Preachers have no shame about copying nonsense and passing it on. I remember Richie Wilkerson at Trinity Church, talking about the ordeal of coming up with sermons. He said preachers use “microwave sermons.” You call your prosperity-gospel buddy and ask him what worked well on the marks in his church, and he emails you a Word file.

Microsoft Word, not THE word.

He thought this was a perfectly okay way to do his job, but the truth is that if you don’t have a word that came to you personally, you don’t know God. There is a kink in the hose. You need to shut up until you get it fixed.

Today God gave me a sentence. He said, “We make things up.” He wasn’t referring to himself. He was referring to human beings. We make things up. Augustine made things up (and plagiarized from people who made things up). The Pharisees made things up, and they still do. T.D. Jakes makes things up. Joel Osteen makes things up. Why are you listening to people who make things up? It breeds dissension. One person believes one liar, and another believes another liar. Then they fight. The Holy Spirit always tells people the exact same thing, so they always, always, always agree when they’re aligned with him.

It makes me nervous when someone gives me an unctuous compliment about how holy I am or how wise I am. Respectfully, who are they kidding? Where were they when I was getting a lap dance? Where were they when I was cruel to animals or when I used cocaine? I’ve said things that make Trump’s Billy Bush video sound like a Sunday school lesson. People need to watch what they say and avoid going overboard. It’s not encouragement. It’s enablement. It will kill my growth.

If I let anyone exalt me, sooner or later I will be exposed for what I really am. No thanks! I’m not having that. Better not to get up on the high horse to begin with. I am not a good person. I’m just a bad man who repeats good things someone else tells him.

John met an angel. This was an immortal being who saw God’s face every day and heard his audible voice. It wasn’t a blogger who managed to absorb some correction after a lifetime of stupidity. Look what John wrote:

And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

The angels are afraid of exaltation. They don’t just politely decline. It scares them. They knew another angel who accepted it, and he’s going to burn forever. Human beings are much less impressive than angels. It’s beyond crazy to exalt us as gods.

I used to be afraid God would try to get me to start a church. I’m so glad that never happened. Who wants to stand in front of a bunch of gullible people who depend on you and think you have no flaws? A crazy egotist, maybe. A sociopath. I don’t need that pressure in my life.

Preachers love to convince people they have special anointings, and that no one else around them is fit to teach. That’s a Satanic idea. God wants to spread power, not hoard it. Remember what happened to Moses? Men came and told him people were prophesying outside the camp, and they asked if they should put a stop to it. Can you believe that? Moses said, ““Are you zealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”

When everyone relies on a few people, it makes Satan’s job easier. He just has to corrupt the small number of individuals who teach. It’s an information choke point. Everything has to come through a small number of openings. That’s a cinch. He invariably succeeds in corrupting churches this way. Corrupting the entire church directly would be impossible for him; he doesn’t have the resources. He blocks the Holy Spirit so we don’t hear from him, and then he convinces exalted fools to lie to us.

I’m pretty much done with church. It would be nice to have a church where I could go and sit in the back and give ten dollars a week, just so I could be around Christians, but I have never known anyone who did an acceptable job of running a church, so I do not want to get deeply involved any more. No more deacon jobs. No more armor-bearing. Forget it. I am tired of getting caught in a power struggle between God and random characters who have grown way too big for their britches.

The exalters discourage people. They convince people that only the holy and just are fit to be among Christians. They put a facade in front of the lost. If the lost buy into it, they’re discouraged from joining us. If they see through it…they’re discouraged from joining us.

There is almost no sin or pattern of sin that can make God reject you. If you’re full of filth, you are a prime recruit. You’re just like the rest of us. Do you seriously think the Pope doesn’t sin? Do you think you wouldn’t be floored if you could read the mind of T.D. Jakes or Joyce Meyer at certain times? Come on. Think of the things you’ve thought and felt. We’re all people. Whitewash doesn’t kill the smell.

A certain amount of input from preachers is useful, and we need to interact from other Christians so we have sources of correction when we get disconnected, but I’m not going to stand by the well and wait for someone to bring me water, and I’m not going to wait until Sunday to drink. I’m definitely not going to pay someone 10% of my income or spend fifteen hours a week serving him unless God tells me to. That’s just how it is.

Pray in tongues. Beg God for correction. Stop asking him to enable you by giving you everything you dream of, before you’re fit to receive it. He’s not Santa Claus. He’s your father. A father corrects and trains. You may be looking for a sugar daddy.

I know this will be useful to you if you put it to work. Work on getting to know God; don’t give your life to an organization. Listen to preachers as long as you have to, and then get yourself weaned so you don’t become a stillbirth. Like Charlie Parker said, “Learn the changes. Then forget them.”

I know it will work. It wasn’t my plan.