God is an extremely jealous and possessive Husband. Your prayers are your sex, and your Husband demands fidelity.

Rampant sexual perversion is a recurring theme that we find particularly prevalent in societies that God is about to destroy. People start having sex with total strangers just because they can. Prostitution becomes huge. Same gender sex gets popular. Adults start sleeping with the young. Parents sleep with their own kids. People have intercourse with animals. Pornography is displayed in public. These are all the flags of a society on the brink of destruction. Whenever laws start changing to say that perverse sex is okay, we know we’re getting near the end of God’s patience with us.

In America, more and more individual states are legalizing gay marriage. Child molesting is out of control. Our country is one of the biggest producers of pornography in the world. Over the last ten years, our justice system has overturned several laws which attempted to make the distribution of child pornography over the internet at least partially illegal. We now claim to be against it while in reality we rake in millions of dollars of profit for producing it. Our position is clear: we want to look at porn and we really don’t care about all the kids we’re destroying in order to get it. Meanwhile, we are aggressively promoting the idea that everyone should have multiple partners in life without any concern over gender or style of intercourse. In elementary school we present sexual promiscuity as the only realistic option to our children. We teach them that trying to control their urges is impossible, then we hand out condoms and think we’ve been good educators. America is excellent at acting shocked and horrified when someone comes forward to say they’ve been molested for years by someone else. But in reality, we know this is happening all the time and we love it. While we shun rapists and molesters as being moral scum, we encourage them to continue degrading themselves and others by protecting them from any severe legal consequences and making real help hard to find. The bottom line is that we WANT perversity in this country. We are one step away from becoming like Sodom and Gomorrah—cities in which it was acceptable for men to gang rape any newcomers who came to town, regardless of their gender. God completely destroyed those cities in what sounds like some kind of volcanic explosion. What will He do to us?

Who contributes to the information on this site?  What are their backgrounds and testimonies?  How did they come to arrive at these conclusions about God?  What are their spiritual journeys like?

We get asked these questions a lot, and we’re not going to answer any of them.  Why not?  Because we want you to learn how to think critically about what you are being taught.

When Christian teachers try to impress you with their dramatic testimonials, or they tell you what denomination they are from, they are encouraging you to trust in irrelevant things.  A denomination is just a brand.  For all you know, they are lying about their testimonies.

As soon as a so-called prophet says, “I’ve received a vision from God”, what happens?  Christians check their brains at the door and just blindly believe.  As soon as a preacher wows you with his stats and his dramatic conversion story, you start thinking, “This guy must really know what he’s talking about,” and you stop seeking confirmation from the Holy Spirit.  This is no good.

We don’t want you to trust us.  We don’t want you to assume everything we say is right just because we’re the ones saying it.  We want you to grow strong in your own walk with God, and that means you need to question EVERYTHING.  You need to pray about EVERYTHING.  You need to remember that God is the ONLY Authority on God.

Today when a tornado devastates some town in Midwest America, how do we explain it? Random chance. Bad luck. An unfortunate coincidence. Do you see the problem? The nation of America is an atheistic nation. Sure we toss out the term “God” now and then, but when it comes to explaining the weather, no one really believes that there is a conscious Being at work behind the scenes. Sometimes we jokingly say “Mother Nature was angry,” but we don’t really think there is some supernatural, feminine force that is invested in which of our towns go down. What we really believe down in our cores is that life is a series of random events. We believe tornadoes are simply by-products of certain kinds of storm systems.

Wrath training is about learning to identify with God’s wrath as an isolated quality. To get you there, the Holy Spirit will begin dropping new perspectives into your brain: perspectives which cause you to start seeing the human race in an entirely different light. Instead of seeing creatures who share your same fragility and flaws, you will begin to see an ocean of creatures who are miserably failing to treat God with the honor and respect He deserves. During wrath training, we completely lose our grip on compassion, mercy, and love for our fellow man. We become consumed with a desire for God to be revered, worshiped, and honored by everything that He makes. So intense is this desire that we feel physically exhausted by it. Fits of rage overtake us when we are confronted with evidence of God being dishonored by the things He has made. The very mention of idolatry makes us want to rip someone’s face off. Because we are being introduced to the Divine view of things, and because the Divine view is a global one, wrath training does not drive us into the sort of petty tantrums we read about in the news in which one man picks up a gun and goes ballistic on his personal enemies. During wrath training, we are not focused on our personal enemies. We are not focused on ourselves at all, but rather on God. HE is the One who we feel jealously furious to protect, and nothing less than global destruction will come close to satisfying us. We want the entire human race to be transferred into Hell NOW. We find ourselves overwhelmed with an intense disgust for every created thing which dishonors God, including ourselves. In certain stages of this training, we can become so detached from our personal viewpoint that we’d even prefer to be in Hell ourselves rather than endure another second of God being dishonored. Suddenly NO ONE is treating God well enough, including ourselves, and this torments us to no end.

Now because God’s wrath is in direct conflict with many of His other qualities—such as His grace and long-suffering patience—we find ourselves becoming extremely frustrated by these qualities when we’re going through wrath training. Remember the purpose of this training is to build core identity in you about God’s wrath specifically—not to introduce you to some happy balance of traits. The balance comes later on. The first stage is all about understanding His wrath as an isolated trait, and that will drive you into an intense dislike of every other quality God has which tempers His wrath. By itself, God’s wrath does not want to be tempered. It wants to dominate the scene and stomp out everything that dares to come against God. When you sincerely care about pleasing God and you find yourself suddenly having a major problem with His mercy, love, and compassion, it’s easy to start panicking that you’re somehow going astray. This is when you need to focus on trusting your Trainer: the magnificent Holy Spirit. He is the One who is going to keep you in alignment with God, and He is quite capable of walking you through this entire process without losing you.

Why does your soul feel terrible for doubting God? Because your soul wants to please God. If your soul hated God, it wouldn’t be the least bit bothered by the suggestion that Jesus Christ is a sadistic creep or a mere delusion. Whenever you find yourself repulsed by what seems to be your own thought, you need to realize that the thought you’re reacting to didn’t originate from you.

Demons plant thoughts into your mind all the time, and they have a very clever way of deceiving you into taking credit for the rot they come up with. It’s a simple matter of watching their grammar. By using first person language, they can get you to take credit for pretty much anything.

The problem starts with you having a poor understanding of how thoughts arrive in your brain. For starters, you think your mind is some private room that demons have no access to. Look up the question “Can demons read our minds?” on the internet, and most Christian teachers will tell you that they can’t. Well, most Christian teachers are delusional. Demons most certainly can read your thoughts. They can also hear your soul’s communication with God, they can manipulate your flesh, and they can do perfect imitations of your “thought voice”. Demons are first rate impersonators, and they love to impersonate both you and God inside your head. When they want you to think that you’re talking to yourself, they use “I” language. When they want you to think God is talking to you, they use “you” language. For example:

You’re such a disappointment to Me. When you hear this thought, you instantly jump to the conclusion that God is talking, then you spiral down into all kinds of guilt and shame because you think God is rejecting you.

I think the whole Jesus thing is a crock. When you hear this thought, you instantly take credit for it, because you can’t imagine anyone else using “I” language in your mind. Because your soul really does want to please God, you then get all distressed at the idea that you are insulting your Savior. But in reality, you haven’t insulted anyone—demons planted the thought in your head just to agitate you and it worked because you don’t understand how they operate. It’s time to get more educated on this subject. See our post Voices in Your Mind to learn more about the origins of your thoughts. Learning to stop taking responsibility for thoughts that didn’t come from you is a critical part of developing good discernment.

God hates magic. In the Bible, He calls it “detestable”. When you teach your kids that Santa is real, you teach them that magic is real and that it is good. Magic is not good. The whole concept of magic is satanic in origin and is intimately associated with demonic power. By teaching your child to believe in magic elves and magic sleighs and a magic man, you set them up to glide quite easily into magic spells, sorcery and witchcraft. Santa might seem like harmless fun. Harry Potter might seem like fun. But such characters desensitize our children to the danger of the occult. As a parent, it’s your job to set up boundaries for your children. You don’t have to make Santa out to be the devil incarnate, but you should be very clear that he is complete fiction and that there is no such thing as good magic. You should be teaching them that humans can’t ever have super powers on their own, and that all such power can only come from God or His enemies. You should be teaching your kids that the enemies of God are terrible creatures who want to harm the people God loves. You should be teaching them that God is far more powerful than His enemies and that He promises to protect all those who properly respect Him. You should be teaching them that unlike Santa, God gets mad. God has boundaries. God doesn’t smile in the face of rebellion. Instead, He hands out spankings. If you’re being a godly parent, your kids should know what spankings are because they’ve received some from you when they were defying your authority. God is not some jolly pushover. He and Santa have nothing to do with each other, which is why you should take care to never blend the two of them in your child’s mind.

 God has intentionally set up an extremely imbalanced system in which He could easily get along without us but we could never get along without Him. This exalts Him as the glorious, essential One and reduces us to insignificant, needy ones. By ourselves we have no value, because we are nothing apart from God. He completely defines us, and He declares our worth is based on nothing but His own personal preferences. It turns out that God declares us to be extremely valuable creatures who He likes to refer to as His dearly loved children. This assessment of us is completely arbitrary—it is not based on anything other than God’s personal choice and it cannot be proven apart from His declaration. We are valuable because God says we are, and He is the final standard. 

Rebellion driven suicide is when we know that God does not want us to kill ourselves, we know that we have the resources we need to resist the temptation, yet we say to God, “I’m going to abuse and destroy this amazing machine You built for me because I’m tired of being here and I have lost all respect for Your Authority.” Is this an honoring attitude? No, it’s rebellious and snarky. Where do we get off destroying God’s property and trying to force our way into eternity? Where do we get off telling the Creator of all things that we’re taking over the control of our existence?

Rebellion driven suicide is an attempt to dominate God by forcing Him to separate our souls from our bodies. In many cases, God just isn’t willing to play along with our games. This is when we find Him botching our suicide attempts. Often God even worsens our physical condition in an effort to drive us back into submission to Him. For example, there are many stories of people jumping off of bridges in an attempt to kill themselves, only to end up smacking the surface of the water so hard that they end up permanently crippled and unable to walk. When we view suicide as a guaranteed way to escape our current misery, we are being very foolish. God will not take orders from us. We will not leave this dimension until He decides it is time.

As a general rule, God says that it is a sin to take a human life, but He also says there are certain situations in which taking a life is acceptable. For example, when Yahweh commanded Joshua to murder all of the men, women and children who were currently residing in the Promised Land, He did not count Joshua’s actions against him because Joshua was obeying a Divine command. It was when the Jews refused to obey Yahweh’s command to slaughter all of the original inhabitants of the Promised Land that they ended up in trouble with Him. When God gives us a direct order, He demands obedience, regardless of whether or not His current order aligns with principles we find written down in the Bible (see Present Convictions vs. Past Commands).

So what do you say to your friend who saw the spaceship land? First off, you warn her about the danger of dabbling in things she does not understand. If she’s a Christian, you encourage her to pray for discernment and ask the Lord to help her guard her mind and focus. If she’s not a Christian, you tell her about the definite existence of very aggressive supernatural beings called demons who would love nothing better than to see her end up in Hell for eternity. Then you tell her that anything which distracts her focus from God and entices her to chase after a created thing is most certainly a strategy of Satan.

As Christians, we have no use for aliens. Their existence is irrelevant to us; we care only about pleasing God. If some alien looking being comes into our lives, we must immediately ask the Holy Spirit for discernment and rely on Him to protect us. If no alien being comes, we certainly don’t want to go hunting them down.

The Incas who built Machu Picchu were entrenched in demonic worship. In this massive structure, we find many tools used for worshiping the sun, which they considered to be a god. All throughout time, man has felt the need to worship the things God has made instead of God Himself. The impressive thing about Machu Picchu is its massive size and extremely functional engineering feats. Should we be surprised that ancient peoples knew how to construct on the side of a mountain? No, we shouldn’t. The only reason we act so shocked is because we don’t credit them with enough intelligence. We also underestimate the intelligence of their main advisers in life–demons who masqueraded as various kinds of gods. Demons understand the physics of this world far better than we do, and are quite capable of teaching people how to build huge structures. When those structures will catch the eye of a whole nation and serve to lead thousands of souls into worshiping idols instead of God, demons are quite motivated to give their human builders useful tips. It isn’t God who inspired the Incas to construct a temple to the sun in Machu Pichu. God didn’t smile on the pharaohs of Egypt deifying themselves or forcing slaves to build their huge pyramid tombs. These things are really sad reminders of how much time and energy people will spend obsessing over lies that will only end up leading their souls into Hell.

In an ideal world, government officials would seek the Lord’s counsel in all things. God never authorized governments to operate independently of Him.

Well, we are the generation who gets to see God glorifying Himself on earth like never before. What a thrilling time to be alive! And how convenient that God has armed us all with camera phones so that we’ll be ready to do our part to capture Him at work. Do you think it is a coincidence that God has spent years teaching us all how to get very good at making and posting our own internet videos before He begins His grand theatrics? Do you think it’s just an accident that the world has become so networked that every country can access the same pictures with a few clicks? Why do you think mainstream news companies have become so open to calling on regular citizens to feed them footage of dramatic events? We think we’re so clever with our technology, but it is God who has been leading our development and application of technology to suit His own purposes. God loves glorifying Himself. He has strategically prepared the planet to publicize His every move and we are going to benefit greatly from His brilliance.

The end times are not the end of hopes and dreams and joy. On the contrary, this is the beginning of better hopes, better dreams and much greater joy. Now is not the time for thinking small. Our infinite God has infinite abilities. The end times are going to be fabulous. We have so much to look forward to.

As Christians, we should find it very sad that so many cultures squandered their God given time and talents in pursuing demons. Yet when we read through the Bible, we learn that there really is nothing new under the sun. People have always been carving ugly idols for themselves, building magnificent temples and tombs, sacrificing their children, and mutilating their bodies as a means of appeasing their fictitious gods. They’ve always worshiped celestial objects, tried to use drugs to connect with the other realm, and played around with curses, spells, and divination. They’ve always embraced superstitious beliefs about the afterlife. They’ve always clung to the belief that someway, somehow, it was possible for mortals to morph into deities who other people would then have to worship. The whole thing is just a tragic waste of time. Instead of embracing soul-saving truth, these people just wasted their years on earth and ended up in Hell. Today, we foolishly ooh and ah over these monuments to spiritual darkness that have been left behind. People think that by studying some leftover idol or shrine to idols, they will learn something useful. Yet all we really learn is that there are a million ways people spin off course once they reject the illumination of the Holy Spirit. God loves every soul He creates and He wanted ancient peoples to come to Him just as much as He wants to save all souls today. But God has always given us the option of rejecting His truth, and as things like the pyramids and the lines of Nazca remind us, most people have taken that option.

If we are to be close to God, we must first be dominated by Him. This means giving up all efforts to control Him and recognizing He owes us nothing, answers to no one, and lives above His own Law. God gets to break His own rules. He gets to change His mind. He gets to change course or covenant anytime He wants to. He created this universe out of nothing and can uncreate it anytime. He takes no orders from us. So is it ever appropriate for us to tell Him what to do? No. We all do, of course. Most Christians will spend their whole lives praying directive prayers like “God heal my mother, God comfort my friend, God help those people.” 

God doesn’t want you to get beat down with a bunch of guilt over the lives that you couldn’t save. Instead, He wants you to go into this period with a firm grip on the fact that He alone controls who dies and how. When you’re too tired to think straight and you grab the wrong medication for a patient, guess what? You’re not perfect. When the mother of the kid who just died in your arms is screaming that it’s all your fault, she’s wrong. It is not your job to save lives. It’s not your job to shield people from the power of God. Your responsibility is limited to asking God to have His total way in your life and then trusting that He will.

God doesn’t need your help to save people. His primary reason for involving you in His work is to strengthen your personal relationship with Him. Practicing submission is a vital part of growing closer to God, and practicing submission is what you’re doing every time you accept the death of a patient and move on instead of telling God that He’s a creep or blaming yourself for not pulling a miracle out of the air.

Life is about you and God. Your relationship with Him is what counts—everything and everyone else must be viewed as expendable. Now maybe God isn’t planning to take your nearest and dearest away from you, but with such mass carnage coming, it’s very unrealistic to think you won’t lose someone who you feel very bonded to. [...] God comes first. We must be willing to fully release His property when He calls on us to do so. We do not own anything down here—everything belongs to God.

For a Christian, death is the best thing that can ever happen to us on this earth. Death is the moment that we finally get to escape this frustrating blindness and at last see our Lord and Savior. What’s better: to be walking around on this planet or to be resting in the arms of Jesus? Death is not something we need to fear, for death is the realization of everything we have spent our lives hoping for and trusting in. Death is when your faith will become fact, when your submission to God will be greatly rewarded. Death is the greatest blessing God could ever give you on this earth, for death is when He says, “Today is the day I want you to feel My arms around you. This is the moment I want you to see My face.”

 No, it really isn’t okay to encourage a blurring of gender lines.  It isn’t okay to stop calling same sex intercourse an abomination.  God doesn’t change His definitions of sin to match cultural fads.  He maintains rigid lines of right and wrong in order to intensify certain trials.  It is because God says having sex with animals is an abomination that struggling with bestiality is such a crisis.  If God hadn’t laid down these lines, we’d all be getting it on with whatever and whoever and never think twice about it.  God has set up rigid boundaries which He then causes some of us to feel intensely suffocated by.  He says getting drunk is wrong, then He wires some souls with intense cravings for alcohol.  He says dressing like the opposite gender is despicable, then He causes some men to feel like they’re really female inside and to want to “transition” into presenting themselves as women in public.  When we find God intentionally trapping us in these kinds of binds, we need to seek Him directly and ask Him to help us honor Him in the midst of our struggles.  

In the Bible, we find Yahweh boasting of raising up mighty armies to come and bash the heads of infants on rocks, cut open pregnant women, rape, pillage, torture, and molest people. As far as lying goes, God constantly deceives us in a variety of ways. He gives false prophecies and empty promises. He raises false expectations and hopes only to later dash them to pieces. He intentionally disillusions us.   As far as sin goes, Yahweh was standing right there with sinful Adam and Eve making them a set of clothes to wear after He’d cursed them in Eden. All throughout the Old Testament we find Him interacting with sinful human beings. In the Gospels, we find Jesus walking around in a nation where most people were defying God. Can God be in the presence of sin? If He couldn’t, we’d all be dead. It’s only God’s hands on involvement in our sinful, sordid little lives that keeps this world from being torn apart.

When it comes to God and suffering, we can hardly say He doesn’t enjoy seeing His own creatures writhing in agony. God made Hell for the primary purpose of showcasing the misery of creatures He was tormenting on a continuous basis. In Revelation we find Jesus presenting Himself as kicking back in Heaven enjoying the public show of souls suffering in Hell. At the end of Isaiah 66, we find Yahweh describing a metaphorical heaven in which He showcases the misery of those who defied Him. In both the Old and New Testaments, we find Yahweh and Jesus stomping all over human beings in the figurative winepress of God’s wrath. Our blood is described as spattering Their garments. So does God enjoy our suffering? In certain contexts, He absolutely does. Trying to prove God’s goodness by what He is capable of doesn’t work at all.

The Catholic denomination teaches you to maintain a whole brothel full of lovers while your God demands to be the only One your soul shares its sacred “sex” with. Do you see the problem? How can we dismiss a characteristic of God which He Himself promotes as one of His most defining qualities? God is an extremely jealous and possessive Husband. Your prayers are your sex, and your Husband demands fidelity. 

It’s not a bummer to be alive when the end times begin, it is a privilege. It’s a thrilling opportunity for you to fly down the road of spiritual maturity faster than you ever have before. What a fabulous challenge for our faith it will be to practice trusting in God’s good Character amid all of the chaos and carnage. When God is pulling off mind-blowing feats which defy all the laws of physics right in front of us, we will find ourselves revering Him on a whole new level. Reverence and trust are two soul attitudes which are essential for developing an intimate bond with God. Embracing our absolute dependency on Him is another, and nothing speeds us down the road of dependency training faster than having God strike our own community with violent devastation.

We should be treating our Gods very differently than we treat other humans. For example, it is utterly inappropriate and dangerous to fully submit ourselves to other human beings, but it is essential that we fully submit ourselves to our Creators. Humans must never be blindly trusted, but our Creators should be. We must be guarded about how dependent we allow ourselves to become on other humans. “I can’t live without you. I could never be satisfied without you. I can’t breathe without you”—when we say or sing such statements to other human beings, it is an outrageous offense to our Creators. They are extremely jealous by Nature, and They deeply resent us exalting mere created things as essential to our existence and happiness. 

So how should you interpret the fact that God’s prophet is looking so gleeful about human suffering? You need to remember that this person is tunnel focused on God’s priorities. What does God care most about? Glorifying Himself. How does God glorify Himself when people are willfully defying Him? Well, how did He glorify Himself when the nation of Israel was defying Him? He trashed her in a very public, very gruesome way. God is big on revenge, and He thoroughly enjoys reminding everyone who is Boss.

When we look back over history, we see that God has done some pretty impressive miracles through guys like Moses, Elijah, and Elisha. So theologically, it’s a cinch to adjust to the idea that God will raise up another prophet during the end times—even one that He performs miracles through. And if we’re going to have someone take on such a role, we’d like that person to be a sold-out Christian, right? No one is going to be more dedicated to God than this prophet. This individual will have been trained by the Holy Spirit to serve Him with total devotion, and to operate with only His priorities in mind. But here’s the thing about a prophet who is obsessed with pleasing God: God is going to be the only One this person cares about. This means that when God decides to split open the ground and knock a bunch of people into it Korah-style, this prophet is not going to be the least bit upset over the loss of human life. Instead, news cameras will catch a satisfied smile on this person’s face. And when God collapses some skyscraper down onto the heads of a bunch of random citizens, or destroys a hospital, or slaughters a bunch of children at a school, His representative is not going to be sharing in the pain that everyone else is feeling. This prophet will have been trained by God to be 100% for whatever God wants to do. But when you see footage of this person smiling or laughing at the scene of major carnage, are you going to think, “What a Christlike attitude”? No, your gut response is going to be, “What a creep!” If you run with this response like the Christians around you will, you are going to end up deciding this person must be possessed after all.  The next thing you know, you’ll be down at the church house praying for God to take this person down. How is the Holy Spirit going to react to you calling His work the work of demons? Not very well.

The key to thriving as a cop is keeping your focus on eternal priorities. It’s not your job to maintain justice in this world. For you, this job is just a tool that God has chosen to bring you closer to Him. Life is about you and God. Growing closer to Him and pleasing Him—nothing else matters.

When people get pummeled to death by falling rubble, there are three scenarios playing out. First, some hardcore, unrepentant rebels are getting a much deserved transfer to Hell. Second, some other unrepentant rebels are being put through some long, drawn out death in order to give them yet another chance to repent. Some of them will take that chance, and those falling rocks you have such a problem with will end up being their salvation. Third, the souls who have been accepted by Jesus are getting transferred on to their reward. Exactly what is your problem with this? Do you begrudge God the right to avenge Himself on those who are taking such delight in spitting all over His grace? Do you have an issue with Him giving rebels one last chance to repent? Do you have a beef with Him taking Christians to Heaven? Are you seeing the problem with griping at God when we read about Him mass slaughtering people in the news? God is infinitely more gracious than we can fathom. 

Every day we each make countless decisions. We don’t naturally think of God being involved when we’re cooking dinner or buying groceries, yet He is very clear that He’s right there beside us. As Christians, the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We don’t want to drag Him through our daily lives like some inanimate piece of luggage. We want to treat Him like the living, feeling, Being that He is. And while He is certainly our Friend, He is also our King, not our peer. This means that instead of inviting Him to participate in the lives we are leading, we want to get to the point of realizing that we are the followers, and He is the Leader. After all, these are not “our” lives at all, but His. We are quite literally His property. By rights, He should be bossing us about on every little detail–from what hairbrush we use in the morning to where we set our shoes at night. The fact that God does not choose to verbally direct our every move does not mean He is content with only being thought of a few times a day, if that. While He gives us a large measure of creative freedom, He wants us to choose to involve Him in every detail of how we spend that freedom. God is not interested in audibly commanding our every breath. He doesn’t want to be viewed as some domineering tyrant but He does want us to realize that living life without Him simply isn’t worth it. He wants us to look to Him for wisdom and guidance in all the little details because we realize He is infinitely smarter than we are. He wants us to check with Him on every detail because we want to please Him with everything that we do. If we truly are living for Him, as many of us claim to be, then it is quite logical that we should be checking our every move with Him. We should always have one ear listening for His Voice to whisper some course correction. We should find His input a delight, not a burden. We should rush to adjust our plans to match His preferences whenever the two fall out of sync.

Where do wisdom, patience, and grace come from? What about physical energy? It all comes from God. So when someone calls you with a crisis at 3:00 in the morning and the whole idea of getting out of bed makes you want to cry with frustration because you’re so exhausted, then you need to say, “I can’t come right now, but I will as soon as I can.” Then you hang up and go back to sleep. Are you being a jerk? No, you’re following God’s leading. God’s leading comes in many forms. When He’s withholding grace, energy, and insight, it’s a clear signal that He doesn’t want you getting involved in this particular issue. When someone calls you for advice and your mind is a complete blank, you need to say, “Let me pray about it and I’ll get back to you.” If God then refuses to give you any insight, then clearly you are not the one He wants to speak through at this time. Is this because He thinks you’re useless? Not at all. At some point, we all have to learn how to wrestle through our issues alone with God. Naturally we will try to put off that day as long as possible and running to pastors for quick cures is a good way to do that. But when God is trying to isolate souls, He will render all of their counselors speechless and block them from finding any middleman that they can rely on instead of Him.

It’s so easy for Satan to make you feel like a failure when you can’t help that soul who is crying in your office. Your defense in these situations is to remember whose flock it is: it’s not yours, it’s God’s. He is the only One who has the resources they need. You only have what God places in your hands, and sometimes He just doesn’t want you to play the role of His spokesperson. Sometimes He wants to use someone else, and sometimes He wants to help the soul directly. To serve God well, we must remember how wild He is and be willing to hear unexpected orders. If God calls us onto the field, we go with gusto. But if He benches us and tells us to sit this one out, then that’s what we need to do. It’s not up to you to invent resources for the flock. When someone comes to you with a request, your job is to go to God and ask if there is anything He wants you to pass on to them. If He places something in your hands, great. If He doesn’t, fine. Your job is just to follow His orders.

Keeping a balanced perspective while counseling others requires that you personally have a strong grip on the fact that God’s goodness and sovereignty exist SIMULTANEOUSLY. God is ALWAYS in control—ABSOLUTE CONTROL, not just partial control. EVERYTHING that God does is GOOD from HIS perspective. His perspective is one that says the LONGTERM SPIRITUAL consequences of an experience are what determines whether it is good or not. Look around the world and you’ll see God giving countless defenseless children into the clutches of people who are going to horrifically abuse them. What is He thinking doing this? He’s thinking long-term spiritual benefits. Early traumas cause us to develop receptivity to certain essential lessons later on in life. When you are overwhelmed by your own internal pain, you approach God with a very different attitude than when you think you have it all together. 

The closer someone is to us, the harder it is to trust God to take care of them. Sure, we think we’re trusting Him when He’s raining down the blessings. But when God starts tearing into the lives of our loved ones, our natural instinct is to panic and fret that He’s letting things get out of control. Well, He’s not, and we won’t see the day that we can do a better job than He can. Relinquishing control is the key here: we need to detach ourselves from the lives of those we care about and stop trying to carry their burdens with them. Get alone with God, close your eyes, and picture God standing right in front of you. Choose a mental image to represent the person you care about: a delicate baby, a flower, a baby animal, a crystal figurine—whatever symbol feels like a fit to you. It needs to be something you can imagine yourself holding in your arms. When you feel burdened by other people’s issues, it’s because you’re trying to carry those issues and the weight is wiping you out. Now picture yourself holding whatever symbol you’ve chosen for the person you’re concerned about. Then mentally hand that symbol over to God and place it in His waiting arms. Take your hands entirely away and step back. See God having total control over that person. This is a mental exercise that helps you practice trust and submission to God. Souls are His property—not yours. As God, He gets to do whatever He wants with whoever He wants. You need to practice submitting to His Authority and entirely letting go of the people you care about. Everything must be surrendered into God’s hands. This kind of exercise can really help you let go of the emotional burden of feeling like it’s on you to fix someone else. It’s not on you, it’s on God, and He is more than able.

God wants it to be very clear that you can’t earn His love, mercy, or forgiveness through good behavior. He has intentionally trapped you in a hopeless situation by giving you a bent for evil that He knows you cannot overcome on your own. This is because He wants you to come to Him not as His peer or as some perfect angel, but as a desperate wreck who has nothing good without Him. God wants to be your Savior, not your buddy. He wants to be the Father that you need to take care of you in life, not some religious icon that you set on a shelf and forget about. He wants to be your C.O., not your subordinate. God really wants a relationship with you, but only if it is one in which He is the kind and generous King while you are the devoted servant. He has no use for what we humans call a functional relationship. He wants dysfunctional—where you are the creature with endless needs and He is the Creator who delights in taking care of you. God wants you to see yourself as totally dependent on Him and helpless to do anything without Him. 

The shocking reality is that you are the quietest speaker in your own mind. Most of the thoughts in your head are coming from either demons or God. You actually say very little and what you do say is always a reaction to what one of them said. We are like sheep—we follow and we react to the leaders in our midst. We do not initiate. When demons speak, we react by either receiving their words and feeling dragged down, or we reject their words as lies and turn our focus onto God. When God speaks, we react the same way: we either receive or reject what He says to us.

“Why do you need them if you’ve got Me? Don’t you think I’m good enough?” These are the kinds of questions God starts asking when He sees us putting our security in other people instead of in Him. Because many Christians hide out in the New Testament and refuse to read books like Isaiah, they don’t realize just how sensitive God is on this issue of dependency. But ignoring certain qualities about God that we don’t like doesn’t make those qualities disappear. God is very jealous and He doesn’t like to share our trust with others. If we refuse to face this fact, we won’t get out of being disciplined, we’ll just be confused about why we’re suffering.

God is so touchy about His creatures depending on Him that He even comes down hard on unbelievers for failing to meet His requirements in this area. Railing at pagan nations for refusing to acknowledge Him as the One who sustains them, He repeatedly lists self-reliance as one of the main reasons He is pounding them into the ground. God is the One who takes care of us, therefore He is the One we should be praising and thanking. When we start saying “Look what I did” and go about patting ourselves on the back, we can expect a spanking.

Evolution promises total freedom from all moral accountability. WOW. Try to step out of your regenerated mindset for a moment and ponder that concept. This is an incredible offer. How can any carnal soul resist such a cherry? If I’m just here as one insignificant link in the long chain of man’s genetic progression, I can do whatever I want. Evolution says my real value lies is my genes, and I didn’t pick them. Maybe I’m one of the fittest, maybe I’m one of the weakest, but whatever I am, I’M NOT RESPONSIBLE. The link who birthed me gets the blame for anything I’m not. When I die, no one will miss me. Evolution teaches that my greatest contribution is passing on my genes to the next generation. Terrific–bring on the promiscuity! The more partners I sleep with, the better, especially if I’m considered the cream of the crop in physical looks or intelligence. Can’t call me out for being immoral because there are no morals—there’s only the glorious gene pool and it doesn’t care what I do.

Evolution says there is no God. WOW. No God means no one to answer to when this life is over. I’ll just die, decompose, and be forgotten. With the threat of eternal consequences gone, all I have to do is try and escape consequences in this life. Bring on the cheating, lying, and manipulating. There are no rules, anything goes. It’s all about me and I don’t have to care about anyone else.

Evolution gives me a license to kill. SCORE. Because I never really liked my parents and I resent having to take care of them now that they’re turning senile. Bring on the euthanasia—let’s clear out the genetic clutter! The animal kingdom has shown us the way: picking off the weak, the elderly and the sick. Bad genes need to be eliminated from the pool so the good ones can dominate. Natural selection is the best—I can select away my unborn child and abort her into oblivion. I don’t have to feel bad, she was just a mass of cells.

Evolution justifies the worship of animals. GOOD. Because animals are way easier to relate to than humans. I can project whatever I want to onto my dog and he can’t talk back. Bring on the risk-free relating! Thanks to Evolution, I’m not weird if I obsess over primates and spend my life trying to bond with a lower species, I’m just appreciating our past. If I find within myself a need to worship something, the chimps will do well. After all, they are just one link away. If I want a family without having to commit, I’ll buy a dog and call him my kid. There’s no real point in investing in people when they’re just a mass of cells. All that matters is that I enjoy myself during my brief life on this earth.

Evolution says I’m in control. SCORE. I always knew we humans were geniuses. Look at the way we pulled ourselves out of the slime and strained our way into humanoids. Next up: an alien species who conquer the universe. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish if we put our minds to it. We are so impressive. We have every right to boast. Pride is a beautiful thing.

Evolution is not about science, it’s about escaping God. It’s about being free to do whatever we want, whenever we want, without having to deal with any consequences. Evolution puts us totally in control. We Christians need to realize what glorious promises this theory offers before we get caught in circular arguments about technical facts. When talking to an evolutionist, you need to focus on the theory that we can escape moral accountability, not argue about apes. When you cut to the bottom line, you’ll quickly find out whether a soul is open or closed to Truth. If they’re open, you can explain to them that we don’t get to define truth, nor can we escape dealing with God by simply pretending He doesn’t exist. It’s glorious news to find out that you aren’t just a product of slime, but an eternal soul who was fearfully and wonderfully made by a loving Creator.

We don’t need to go around trying to fix people or overcome world problems that God wants to exist. There is supposed to be poverty, hunger, sickness, suffering, and violence in this world. “World peace” is a slogan that Satan came up with in order to get us distracted from God’s priorities.

You have to go into this calling with your eyes wide open. Sometimes God lies. Sometimes He gives false prophecies. We find examples of Him doing this in the Book, and He is still doing it today. If you’ve got your pride all wrapped up in how legitimate you look to others, you’re going to be easy for Satan to trip up. Our job is to relay God’s messages exactly as He gives them to us. If He wants to speak lying words through us and make us look like fools, then so be it. You know whether you heard from God or not. You know what He told you to say. Stand on that, no matter what He does. Your job is just to relay the message.

If God has just made you look like a complete fool by having you predict a specific event which He then didn’t follow through on, the first thing you need to understand is that this isn’t some kind of punishment, nor is He declaring His rejection of you. When you are devoted to serving God, it’s hard not to feel devastated the first time He pulls the rug out from under you. Naturally your first instinct is to assume you misunderstood Him. But here you need to be careful not to lose your grip on reality. Look back over the series of events and pay special attention to what your heart attitude was. Were you anxious to please? Were you careful not to speak until you had a clear directive? When you know you did everything right and that your soul was sincerely seeking to honor God, don’t accept the conclusion that you messed up. You did not mess up—God messed you up, and He did it on purpose. He knew from the start that He had no intention of following through on the prophecy He told you to speak.

[...]

When God sets you up to look like a fool and a liar in front of your immediate audience, don’t try to salvage your reputation with a bunch of lame excuses. Your reputation is God’s property, and He reserves the right to destroy it. Submission is what is needed here. As rotten as it feels, you need to step back and let God hang you out to dry if that is what He wants to do. You need to leave your reputation in His hands and let Him have His way with it. He is your Defender in life, and you mustn’t throw Him over for some cheaper substitute. When people throw your unfulfilled prophecies back in your face, look to God to give you the words to say. If He leaves you speechless, then don’t say anything. This is a test of loyalties. You and God both know that you obeyed Him and that He set you up for a fall. Are you the sort of servant He can call on for anything or are you only willing to obey as long as His assignments make you look good?

Once we accept God’s perspective of sin, we realize that we are totally equal to every other soul on this earth. I can’t afford to look down my nose at the active child molester next door because when I was four years old, I stole a cookie out of the cookie jar after my mother told me not to and then I lied about it. To God, I’m as bad as the molester. 

 [On why God gives children cancer]

It is always when we feel helpless and distressed that we remember God. Too often that is the only time we remember Him. If we had our way, we’d erase all pain from this world and thereby take away one of God’s most effective means of securing our attention. Then we’d all become completely self-absorbed and totally ignore His existence. Does God smile on this plan? Not hardly. Our Creator loves us too much to let us walk away from Him without a fight. He will do anything it takes to intensify our interest in Him

In this world, we learn not to discount the feedback our senses give to us. Yet when it comes to spiritual growth, we must learn to live primarily by faith, which means discounting what our senses tell us whenever their message conflicts with the convictions of the Holy Spirit.

Faith is strengthened by learning to trust in God’s Character. It is weakened when we try to rely on our senses or our ability to always perceive God’s actions as logical and good. For faith to grow strong, it must be put through continuous stress tests. These tests are created when God asks us to believe something which our senses completely reject.

Today Americans walk around with coins jingling in their pockets that read “In God We Trust” and at the same time they say it is a crime to pray to Jesus in public. It’s frightening to wonder how God is reacting to this in Heaven. Are we not being as hypocritical as the ancient Jews? Are we not specifically dragging His Name through the muck with our actions? We all know that the God being referred to on our coins is the Christian God, not some fictitious idol. And we all know it’s the Christian God we’re trying to scrub out of our Pledge of Allegiance. So while we pass back and forth little monuments that proclaim our loyalty to God, we are at the same time hanging up public banners that say the cross was a myth and putting on theatrical shows like “Jesus Christ Superstar” which make a mockery out of who He was and why He came to die. We are pumping out movies, posts and imagery that attack all Three Persons of the Holy Trinity while at the same time defending our right to publicly worship idols. No one complains when an ugly Buddha statue is put on display in a public workplace or restaurant, but to display a crucifix anywhere but inside a church or private home is offensive. Given how personally God takes actions that aren’t even aimed at Him, how much more enraged should we expect Him to be when He is being intentionally targeted? Clearly America is doing everything she can to try and provoke an aggressive response from God, despite all the historical records we have of Him leveling whole empires who insulted Him in the past. In the Bible we learn that God takes His time in exacting His revenge, waiting until a nation is off its guard and so full of arrogance that it thinks it is indestructible. Then He takes delight in slowly turning its greatest points of strength into smoking piles of ash and rubble. This is not the time to be praying prayers like “God bless America.” Blessings and a new rise to power are not what’s on the board for this most ungrateful nation.

Here’s where we have to remember that our Gods are wild and unpredictable. They make promises, and They break Them. They draft covenants, and later They scrap them. There is nothing preventing Yahweh from introducing an entirely different covenant tomorrow, in which He says, “You know how I didn’t tell any of you about Jesus for thousands of years? Well, I’ve got more secrets to reveal. There’s actually a fourth God that I’m about to introduce, and unless you all submit to Him as well, I’ll take your salvation away from you. The Covenant I introduced through Christ is now null and void—I’m changing the rules up again and you all had better keep up.” God gets to do whatever He wants whenever He wants. 

The wisdom of this world is going to lead you into spiritual rebellion and earthly misery. Don’t listen to idiots who tell you that it doesn’t matter what the contents of your sexual fantasies are. It most certainly does matter. Your mental focus has an enormous impact on your relationship with others, your relationship with God, and your future happiness. God says that the only person you should ever be having sex with is your opposite gender spouse. If you’re married, having sex with anyone else with your mind or with your body constitutes adultery. If you’re single, having sex with anyone else is fornication. God detests adultery and fornication. God tells us to stay away from these things because He put us together and He knows that these things will harm us. If you load the gas tank of your car with gravel and then turn on the engine, you’re going to end up with some very expensive repair bills. If you blow off God’s guidelines about your sexual fantasies, you’re going to end up paying for your rebellion with some serious internal misery. God will not be mocked. If we repent of our bad attitudes and sincerely ask Him to have His way with us, He will bring great blessings out of our struggles. But if we chose to defy Him by ignoring the things He has taught us, then we will be disciplined accordingly. God is not some spineless parent who needs us to like Him. God is the King, and He won’t put up with our snarky “I don’t care what You say” attitudes. God spanks His kids and He avenges Himself on those who dare to spit in His face. So don’t go there. If you know you’re heading down a wrong road in the area of sexual fantasies, start talking to the Holy Spirit about it and ask Him to help you get back into a good place with Him. 

“That surgeon saved my life by operating when he did.” It is never acceptable to credit mere mortals with things that only God can do. Before we say anything to the human instruments that God chose to work through, we need to be thanking Him first. And at no time is it ever alright for us to say some human saved our life or that some drug cured us. It is always GOD working through the human or GOD working through the drug. He is the only Source of healing power and wisdom. When we go around promoting pills or people as sure cures to others without even bothering to mention God, He is highly offended.

It is through wrath training that we learn to personally identify with God’s fury to the point that we come to view Hell the same way that He does: that it is a marvelously just punishment for all those who dare to defy the Magnificent King. Once we are obsessed with God being exalted, we do not shrink back from delivering His acrid messages to the masses. Instead, His caustic words sound like beautiful music to our ears. Instead of mourning when God starts tearing lives apart, we’re whooping and cheering. We can think of no greater thrill than seeing God exalted, and Hell is all about God exalting Himself by putting the torment of His enemies on public display forevermore

The important point for you to understand is that Hell is God’s turf, and He thinks it is FABULOUS.  No one forced God to come up with the sadistic torments of Hell: they were all His idea.  Today many Christians like to pretend that if Hell is real, it will only be a temporary torment.  Well, no, this is not what God teaches us.  Hell is ETERNAL.  This bothers us intensely, but we will just have to suck it up because GOD defines reality, not us.

One of the key elements of spiritual maturity is dependency. If you want to go far with God, you must learn what it means to be totally dependent on Him. The only way you can learn dependence is to have your personal resources ripped away from you. It’s nasty business and a very painful process yet this is the one and only road that leads to intimacy with God and IT IS WORTH IT.

We all start out thinking we understand dependency, but we don’t. We think of it like a man with a broken leg who has to hobble around on crutches. This isn’t dependency, this is merely inconvenience. If someone takes his crutches away, he can make do by hopping about and grabbing other people and furniture. Ask this man if he’s learning dependency and he’ll roll his eyes and tell you all about his trial. But then go ask a man who is paralyzed from the neck down and can’t even breathe without the aid of a machine. Ask him if he knows what dependency is and you’ll get a whole different answer just by the look in his eyes. God wants paralytic dependency from us.

What does it mean to reverentially submit to Jesus? It means that your nose is pressed into the dirt in front of His feet and you are totally owning the fact that you’re depraved scum that doesn’t deserve to ever stand in the Presence of a holy God. Let’s get real about calling Jesus your Savior—that title means nothing unless you think you need someone to save you. “Lord” and “Savior” are not just nicknames we attach to Jesus. They are words which we use to communicate our understanding of our relationship to Him. “Lord” means Jesus is God Almighty and we are lowly slaves who don’t get to have any say about anything. “Savior” means we earned the torment of Hell with our hideous behavior, but in an act of unprecedented mercy, Jesus took our punishment upon Himself and saved our souls from unthinkable agony. If you aren’t thinking of any of these things when you go around calling Jesus your Lord and Savior, then you are in a very serious crisis. Jesus isn’t some nice Guy who treats all the agony He went through on the cross like it’s no big deal. Jesus demands that you lower yourself in front of Him. You don’t get in with Jesus with a simple high five. He is God Almighty. Your soul has to be on its face. Your pride has to be flattened. Reverential submission is an attitude which says, “I am worthless and You are worthy. I am scum but You are glorious. I am a wretch but You are perfect.”