If You Paid for it, it’s not a Gift

I wrote about the help God has been giving me with love. The process has not stopped, so I felt like I should keep writing.

Someone asked me how I go about loving certain people. Many human beings are venomous and obnoxious. That’s reality. A commenter wanted to know if I tried to think about the good parts of people.

That gave me pause, because the answer surprised me: I don’t.

That proves what’s happening to me is supernatural. I can’t do what I’m doing. It’s not me.

Sometimes when God makes an improvement in you, you forget what it was like before he fixed you. That’s the situation I’m in now. A couple of weeks ago, I would have had to grit my teeth and focus in order to try to love certain people. That’s not what’s happening now. It’s more like turning on a flashlight and letting the beam shine. I have the power to turn it on or shut it off, but I didn’t put it in myself. There is something inside me that wasn’t there before, and it doesn’t depend on the person toward whom I direct it.

That’s part of the beauty of it. If other people’s bad qualities prevent you from loving them, then they control you, right? They can always take away your love. How can you be the head and not the tail if other people can take your love at will?

We love saying other people can’t steal our joy, but we don’t say that about love very much. Love is more fundamental than joy. Love gives rise to joy, so if you can get ahold of love and hang onto it, joy will follow.

Saying, “You can’t steal my joy,” is a little selfish, because it leaves love out of the equation. It’s sort of like saying, “You can’t keep my paycheck,” when you haven’t been going to work. Not that love is work. I just mean love comes before joy, like work comes before a paycheck.

Maybe I shouldn’t have used work in the analogy. Hopefully, you get the idea. Sunshine comes before photosynthesis. Investing comes before interest. Planting comes before reaping. Wind comes before waves.

I don’t care how rotten people are; they can’t take this from me. I won’t have it. I’m not their slave.

I may not like everyone. There are many people I refuse to associate with, because associating with them is a nasty and unprofitable experience. There are a lot of people I can’t help but contemn. But I don’t have to hate them or live with anger because of them.

I feel a lot better now. Often in the past, I felt bad because anger was still in place. The root of anger will keep bearing fruit as long as it’s not pulled up. Whatever I tried to do with the root of anger in place was sabotaged by the root’s presence. It’s like trying to build a house right next to a tree. The roots will grow under the house and break the foundation, over and over. If you kill the tree, the house can be built. Now I have more power to cut the roots whenever they try to spread.

Christians in the US need to get ahold of this right now, because we’re very busy humiliating people who are against God, and anger is breaking up our foundations. We are crowing about Trump’s win, as if it proved we were the master race. That’s kind of crazy. If you’re going to be nasty and cruel, wouldn’t it make more sense to do it when you lose, not when you win? Anyway, it will bring a backlash of defeat. A certain number of people here have to deal with our win correctly in order to motivate God to keep helping us.

I believe an increased flow of love will improve my health and enable God to bless me more. I think that when your love is constipated, it’s like having obstructions in your lymph system and urinary system and so on. Things that should be cleansed get blocked and encrusted with filth. Destructive pressure builds up. Your body and mind will attack themselves. Seems that way, based on what I’m experiencing now.

It’s highly disturbing that famous preachers keep lying to us about money and keeping us convinced that God’s big priority is making us rich. Look at what we could be getting, if we weren’t deceived. We are chasing things we can’t get. We are chasing blessings that don’t exist, and when you do that, you’re really chasing curses. We’re offending God with our covetousness, and we are not chasing the good things he actually wants us to have.

People like T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen, Paula White, and Benny Hinn are poisoning us. It’s as if we’re all swimming in a septic tank, and these people are holding our heads under the surface. The evil they do is astounding, but we deserve it, because our desires give them opportunity.

The Pope…I don’t even know what to say about him. How can any Christian over the age of 12 love socialism? Who has killed more Christians than the socialists? Who has burned more churches? Who has touted man’s nonexistent power to change and help himself more? No one. The Pope is toxic and ignorant.

Cold, intellectual preachers are killing us,too. God doesn’t want engineers. He wants people with hearts like his.

The sad thing is that we have no leadership. Where are we supposed to turn? No one on earth–no one prominent–is teaching the things God has shown me directly. People say no church is perfect, but the truth is, no church is even adequate. Churches are poisonous. If you want to benefit from a church, go and get yourself saved and baptized with the Spirit, start praying in tongues as much as you can, and beg God every day for correction and knowledge. Then learn to ignore the garbage your church teaches you. This is your only hope of making real progress.

Be extremely careful about accepting any type of promotion from a church. It’s almost always a trap. When you’re part of the team, you have to parrot the party line, even if the party line is killing people. Don’t get attached to anything but God. Don’t owe anyone but God. You don’t need to be a youth pastor or deacon in order to serve him. You don’t need a “platform.” You can do just fine on your own, once you’re able to hear from God.

You don’t need a license from a man or an organization.

Jesus had no position in the religious hierarchy. Neither did John the Baptist or any of the apostles. Look at the prophets. They were rejected. Amos was a vinedresser. Elijah and Elisha were solitary. Elisha was a farmer. Moses was a shepherd. David was a shepherd whose brothers hated him. Meanwhile, the vast majority of priests amounted to absolutely nothing. Try and name a priest from the Bible who is honored today, to the degree that Stephen or Moses is honored.

The Jews killed Isaiah. They tormented and imprisoned Jeremiah. They stoned Stephen. If men love you and honor you, look out! It’s the devil, trying to put you to sleep on his lap so he can shave your head and put out your eyes. God help you if someone tries to point a TV camera at you. It takes God-given strength to endure that without being corrupted.

The Bible clearly says that God sets the godly apart for himself. That doesn’t mean he sets them apart in churches. It means he sets them apart, with him. In his presence. When you’re in church, be careful. Think like a person in a hospital ward during a plague. Avoid being infected. Avoid indiscriminate intimacy with the infected. This is part of what it means to be the head and not the tail.

To be holy, you have to have flexibility. Men will bind you with chains and straps so they can control you and tell you what to say. If you accept the chains, the Holy Spirit will go somewhere else. He is not going to be dishonored and compete with men for your loyalty. He is humble and patient, but he is still God, and he requires a certain amount of honor. Every day God gives up on people he loves, and he, personally, has them thrown into hell. If you tax him long enough, he will give up on you, too.

You can do what you want. Never forget that. It should scare you.

Don’t worry about the difficulty of doing what God wants. He does not want you to do it with your own strength. It offends and grieves him when you do that. He expects and demands that you accept his help. Don’t be discouraged. Look for his help.

We are heirs, not employees. How would you feel if you tried to give your son a fortune, and he insisted on getting a job at 7-Eleven and living in an efficiency?

Remember all those times in the Bible when Jesus worked really hard and got blisters? Neither do I! Never happened! God isn’t impressed or pleased with your hard work. He created hard work as a reward for the cursed. Learn to receive charity. Jesus himself was not too good to do that. Who are we to insist on deserving good things?

Imagine how terrible life would be if we got what we deserved.

Love is available. Faith is available. Victory is available. It has already been paid for, by someone else.

I don’t know if I’m doing a good job of testifying, since I’m not making many people angry. I guess I’m being spared their participation here. If what you say pleases everyone, it’s wrong. Real testimony gives rise to hate and murder.

If I can get good things from God, anyone can. Keep banging on the door.