Refusing to listen to different views robs us of the opportunity to learn, to grow, to “sharpen” one another, to love one another. So it’s important and wise to humble ourselves to listen to others. It’s also important and wise to seek discernment from God as we do.
If God wakes you up to lifelessness and powerlessness in people who identify themselves as his, time is of the essence. But what in the world do you do?
Choosing to go with God where my church culture had forbidden, I had no clue how much seeing and grieving lay ahead. And how very much love and life.
Abuse had begun to open my eyes to evils in my church culture. Then, God took me on a pilgrimage into the past, to show me what is happening now.
Masters of misdirection spend their lives using anyone, everyone, to get whatever they want. They do it so subtly, so skillfully, that the exploited ones usually do not know they’re being used.
Spiritual exhaling releases what God breathes into you, for the building of his kingdom and the honor of his name. Exhaling the Breath of God, you release life.
As you inhale, you’re filled with breath. As you inhale spiritually, you’re filled with the Breath of God. Spirit-to-spirit, you receive his life.
In Scripture, God makes a direct connection between breath and spirit, and so, between the act of breathing and the act of relating to him. He shows us: As breath is to the body, being filled with the Spirit and living in the power of the Spirit are vital to life in Christ.
It’s agonizing to be bullied. And in the church? The agony multiplies exponentially when victims have believed deceptive abusers to be godly Christians.
"How long will you try to go both ways?" Elijah cried. Where people identified with God cling to deep double-mindedness, they empower a two-headed snake.