BTZ Blog

People who ascribe to godliness...must avoid being fear-mongers and hate-mongers because they are “God fearing” or, believe they are “God pleasing” by using out of context Bible verses as ammunition to load their fear guns and shoot them  as condemnation bullets at people and claim it is the gospel and believe it appeases the God they fear. Respecting God based on fear is despicable to God, respecting God based on love is pleasing in His sight! People ought to be an example of the God that Jesus was the express image of...a God who is a people lover, not a people hater, a God who is a people forgiver, not a people condemner, a God who is a life giver, not a life taker. The scriptures do not declare that God is HATE...it declares that God is LOVE! Jesus did not belittle, berate, hate or condemn people, therefore, neither should “believers”!

The traditional understanding of “come ye out from among them and be ye separate saith the Lord” believers have been taught to believe and by practice still believe, is to not be friends or associate with non-believers, especially associating with them in their environment. Oh...it is OK to try and scare the hell out of them when they come to event-driven-meetings. But, is that concept the understanding we get from the life of Jesus? Jesus is our best example of living a life of holiness. He is God in human flesh. His life serves as the best conclusion for what divine holiness looks like when living in the community humanity. And they rightly called him “a friend of...sinners” (Matt. 11:19). So, if the traditional understanding is correct why did the God-Man who associated with the bad of the baddest of His day go against the established belief of the law keepers...have we missed the point of His living lesson? Jesus is the friend of sinners, not their enemy! What Jesus is not doing wh

Never condemn or ridicule your wife’s choices. Why you may ask? In doing so you are condemning and ridiculing yourself because you are one of her choices and as far as she may be concerned, you may not be among the best choices she has made!

I don’t always get what I want, but I am also very thankful to God that I don’t always get what I deserve!

Jesus’ Grace Gospel of Mercy and Love is being planted in the fertile soil of people’s hearts but, if you are among the few who have the courage to boldly speak the Grace Message truth, be assured of venom attacks from the fangs of the “super-saved” “self-righteous” people who think we are the spiritually uninformed “sub-saved, wishy-washy, lovey-dovey, gracie-crazy grace people.” Stand strong grace-sharers, the “super-saved” “self-righteous” people are so important to, and so loved by God, for us to be wishy-washy about expressing the Love and Grace Gospel of Jesus Christ. We must understand that their traditional teachers teachings are so established in their mind as truth they are closed-minded, and this closed-mindedness prevents the Holy Spirit...God’s Teacher...the Spirit of Truth, from penetrating their closed-mindedness! Their opposition to the Jesus’ Gospel of Grace and Love is due to their strong belief that they are contending for what is right without realizing that in doin

For some people TRUTH is HATE, because, they HATE the TRUTH that reveals the UNTRUTH of what they have accepted as TRUTH! To HATE TRUTH because it upsets our TRUTH horse cart is a reason to HATE the UNTRUTH we have believed as TRUTH and LOVE the TRUTH that reveals the UNTRUTH we accepted as TRUTH!

Because of God's grace we are free in His love and living in His life because we are thoroughly forgiven through His forgiveness. That statement is only a fraction of what we have received through His grace. We are raised with Christ and seated with Him in heavenly places even while we are bound to this earthly realm. When we accepted the offer of Christ to enter into relationship with Him, His Spirit came into our very lives and and we became a part of His powerful life. We are now one with Jesus, He is here with us on earth, that causes us to be in heavenly places. Brothers and sisters, His feelings for people are feelings of love and affection and He sees us blameless because of His finished work. We are forever the loved child of God. Therefore, do not live in fear as an unloved child because there is no loveless-ness in God. We are to be living proof to people outside of the kingdom of our loving God's unending kindness because we are His beloved forever.

Has the truth of the gospel, by in large, gone unrealized in its fulness, truthfulness and power? Unless people move into a relational understanding of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and by His resurrection people will continue to be short changed regarding the good news of the gospel of God’s grace, love, freedom and power provided through the gospel of Jesus Christ! Some people give lip service to the gospel as being good news. They then preach and teach as if it is bad news...”God hates sinners”, “God will get you for that”, “disobey God and He will punish you”, “God will strike you with plagues and sickness if...”, “God is a angry God,” “God is a hating God” “God is a killing God,” “God is a revengeful God”, “You must have done something wrong for you to be in this state...repent and you will be restored.” The fear factor, scare factor tactic of the judgmental actors may be a good motivator for cementing control of people they want to corral by keeping them living fearing God

The love of God is greater far Than tongue or pen can ever tell; It goes beyond the highest star, And reaches to the lowest hell; The guilty pair, bowed down with care, God gave His Son to win; His erring child He reconciled, And pardoned from his sin. Oh, love of God, how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall for-evermore endure— The saints’ and angels’ song. When hoary time shall pass away, And earthly thrones and kingdoms fall, When men who here refuse to pray, On rocks and hills and mountains call, God’s love so sure, shall still endure, All measureless and strong; Redeeming grace to Adam’s race— The saints’ and angels’ song. Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made, Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade; To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry; Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Though stretched from sky to sky. Sadly there are those within Christendom wh

The bible is a book that contains words of God, words of man and words of Satan, written by men. However, JESUS is the WORD of God living in men. The older I become the more I realize that it is not the bible that I am to know and understand Jesus through, it is through the Jesus of the bible that I am to know and understand the bible. Between the two there is a big difference, and adhering to the teachings of man that the bible reveals Jesus validates the reason so many institutional groups have a different view of Jesus thus, so much disunity in His body!

Has the truth of the gospel, by in large, gone unrealized in its fulness? Unless people move into the fulness of understanding of what transpired on the cross people will continue to be short changed regarding the good news of the gospel of God’s grace and love, freedom and power provided by the gospel of Jesus Christ! Some people preach and teach that the gospel is bad news...”God hates sinners”, “God will get you for that”, “disobey God and He will punish you”, “God will strike you with plagues and sickness if...”, “God is a angry God,” “God is a hating God” “God is a killing God,” “God is a revengeful God.” The Bible teaches that the Gospel is GOOD NEWS!

People who always bring up your past may be intimated by your presence in the present. God never brings up your past for the purpose of laying shame, blame, guilt or condemnation, and you can rest assured that He does not move upon people to bring up your past for the shame and blame game either.  God is not, nor cannot be intimidated by what we have done, what we are doing or what we will do, “therefore, there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus”. Whatever we do comes as no surprise to Him, nor does it cause Him to forsake us or love us less. He is there to lift us up to continue on our journey with Him and comfort us by assuring us that He has already paid the price for out failure and instead of condemnation He walks along side us we restore our fellowship with Him.

The adulation of faith healers by the miracle seekers, who give them the status of “great men of God”, giants of the faith, is such that they are accredited with being miracle performers. These circus stage performers perform in the spotlight where all attention is focused on their theatrics that spellbind the audience drawing their attention from Jesus and on what the preacher-tainers are doing. Their staged miracle working performance is what attracts the spiritually weak minded following to support the preacher-tainer’s insidious, insatiable appetite for recognition, fame, power and money. Miracles do not happen so that attention seekers can manipulate with manipulative precision the unsuspecting, uninformed people into the deceptive deception that permeates their lifestyle. When Jesus worked miracles He did not seek the spotlight in the circus ring of theatrics. Jesus was not demonstrating what God Himself can do, but what God can to do through man! Jesus is ou

To say God’s gospel of grace is cheap is a disgrace in the face Jesus who died in our place, empowering the gospel of grace. People who say that grace is a gospel for the lazy, the gospel for the sinning saint, the gospel of the non-committed or the gospel of lies is proof positive that such people need to realize they despise the accomplishment of the finished work of Christ on the cross.

The do, do’s of the law keeping and the performance doing gospel of the pre-cross era are not Jesus’ done, done’s, of the love living, grace giving, gospel of the post-cross era! Therefore,  the do, do performance gospel should not be preached to people living on this side of the cross. The law says do, do, do, do, Jesus says done, done, done, done, the great transactions done! The law says work harder, Jesus says, rest in the finished work I have done! The law says do and be blest, Jesus says, I have done it, therefore you are blest! The law says, do to be accepted, Jesus says, it is done, I am in you and you are in me therefore, you are accepted! There is nothing you can do to make God love you any more, nor is there anything you can do to make God love you any less! The can do’s are not spiritual should do’s, they are just religious do do’s they want you to do to keep you doing because if people don’t do their do do’s religion would be done! Because the do do’s are done done’s does

When it comes to adverse circumstances we are going through, we want God to be in the removing business, while He Himself may choose to be in the improving business! God, was in the removing business as to removing our iniquities, He is also in the improving business when it comes to our adverse circumstances! Because He is going through the circumstances with us we experience His ever abiding presence and peace as we go through the circumstance and when we are tried we will come forth from the circumstance as purified gold.

Most of us believe, accept and understand the Bible, God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and spiritual realities as it was told to us by the opinionated opinions of whatever religious camp we happen to be under. The problem with that is when we start explaining things based on the Bible it is easy to rationalize our interpretation to what we think it says based on what we believe in the light of what we have been told. To understand spiritual matters we need Holy Spirit revelation not man’s opinionated religious opinion, for it is the Spirit that will lead us into all Truth. The greatest mistake of those who told us what we believe and subsequently our understanding in interpreting what we believe the scriptures say to pass on to others is, spiritualizing what should be literallized and literalizing what should be spiritualized! Man in all his wisdom has not the wisdom to differentiate what should be spiritualized or literalized. Because we have believed and accepted our understanding of God b

Some people are so friendly that if they organized a friend party they would find them-self alone with them-self.

This may come as a shocker to some...but, scriptures do not say you are Christ’s disciple because you have repeated “the sinner’s prayer”, follow religious rules and regulations, attend denominational conferences, support the glitter and glamor of the star studded shows of famous pa-star performers. No, the scriptures declare that a person is known as a disciple of Christ because of their love for people! People are not known as disciples of Christ because of theology, how many bible verses are known, the doctrines that are believed; nor because we are a church goer or a denominational supporter. People are known to be disciples of Christ because they are a God lover whose love transforms them to be a people lover and a people supporter.

The grace gospel message given to Paul by Jesus, when understood for what it is,  will revolutionize our approach to God and our its presentation to the people of the world. This is the message that turned the world upside down for Christ by the early Church and the same power is in the grace message today. Peter Youngren was a minister of the institutionalized traditional mindset where He knew the scripture but did not understand the gospel, as are many out there today who are pat themselves on the back for knowing the scripture from a child yet fail to understand the scripture they know therefore, misunderstand the portion of the gospel they know as the totality of the gospel. Youngren said and I quote; “It was a revelation to me when, after 25 years of ministry, I recognized that I didn’t know as much about Jesus as I thought.  Once I was willing to admit this, the floodgates of revelation opened and I discovered more than ever how the fullness of the Godhead bodily dwells in Him. 

Before a person or the Holy Spirit can influence us towards godly righteousness and to understanding the completeness of the finished work of Jesus on the cross, we are going to have to change our mindset regarding our old way of thinking, believing, speaking, and acting from a closed-minded, tradition saturated point of view to being open minded so our receiving tributaries can comprehend and understand the completeness of Jesus’ finished work because the completeness of what Jesus finished is so much more the traditional view. Closed mindedness limits our spiritual progress and hinders the Holy Spirit from being able to show us the revelation  and fulness of the gospel.

A person made the following comment on one of my posts, from his comment I conclude he is of the opinion that the faith men mentioned in the Bible reference he mentions below are there because of what they did. Below is the direct quote; “We can read the great Faith chapter of Bible Hebrews chapter 11 and see what faith can accomplish. Ask yourself the question if you were back in Bible days would you have done enough to be included in this chapter.” This thinking is an example of the emphasis that is put on "works" as gaining God's acceptance and favor. If you don't do enough works you are not included in the "faith" chapter nor a great man of God. It seems to me that he is under the delusion that the people that are worthy of inclusion in the “faith chapter” had a greater faith than those who did not get their name mentioned there…and those that are there are there because of the great miracles they did. Well, what about Stephen, Pet

I have read that there are one-hundred and eighty-three questions asked of Jesus in the Gospels, of which He directly answers only three. This seems odd, because growing up in the religious world it was taught that coming to Jesus, which inferred joining a religion, is the means to get answers to people's unanswered questions and to resolve people's problems. This is substantiated by the phrase many of us have heard, "You do not have any problems, all you need is Jesus", meaning that Jesus would answer all our questions and solve all our problems using religion to accomplish the task. But, is this Jesus’ understanding of the function of being in relationship with Him? The scriptures show He operates very differently from that perspective. Jesus’ questions were often meant to re-position us to draw our own conclusions without the religious biases, bring us out of our dualistic mindset regarding God's character, challenge our understanding of God

People learn more from who we are than what we teach or preach.

Seeing with your heart and feeling with your soul will give you a truer picture than seeing with your eyes and feeling with your hands!

When Men Stop Extolling Exterior Beauty in Women and Women Stop Extolling Money-Wealth in Men maybe Society will Finally Realize that Happiness and Contentment in Life Living is about Relationships not Beauty-ship of the Beautiful or Wealth-ship of the Wealthy. Internal Beauty and the Wealth of Health is what brings Happiness and Contentment in in Relational Life Living!

Friendship between true friends will cause two people who are separated by miles to be so close to each other that they feel the hug in their heart as they embrace each other soul to soul.

Loneliness is not only felt when you are alone, it is also being in the presence of people who make you feel alone!

These are the words of Jesus. We have rightly understood that Jesus is the rock that He is building His Church on, but do we really understand the revelation of Who Jesus is that enables us to have a rock solid faith? Church people today make the mistake of interpreting Jesus' words through focusing on self and spending their energy on trying to fulfill the word of Jesus in their own strength through various evangelistic outreaches that are more man's attempts to build His Church than it is Jesus building His Church. We must understand that if we do not become a rock through the finished work of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection, an extension of the Rock Christ Jesus, and understand all that took place at those world changing events, we will continue to try to build His Church through man-made endeavours. The church system that is practised today has been in place for some 2000 years and beyond, yet it has not been successful in making many disciples of C

Teaching compassion or learning compassion is futile if we do not live compassionately showing compassion! The feeling of compassion if not put in action by participation is an infraction that renders compassion to just a feeling of inaction.

People have been falsely accused by other people of believing they are spiritually superior to others because they do not agree with the philosophy regarding spiritual matters nor understand the Church the way the accusers do. Because people have a different understanding of the Church than the religious understanding that is so widely accepted by society at large that motivates people to accuse others of being a heretic, is a judgmental condemnation of peoples motivation, which in my opinion only reveals what is in the heart of the accusers. These accusers understand other peoples motivation so poorly they themselves do not have the motivation to understand why they understand other people so poorly! These accuser’s understanding and patience with people such as myself, is not determined by the length of the waiting period for us to agree with them, their understanding and patience is determined by their attitude, body language, behavior and reaction to us because we believe different

As believers we should have ears to hear and a willingness to listen until the heart understands before we speak. We then ought to speak with kindness, grace and love and not with condemnation and judgement.

The problem with denominated groups is that segregated denominations support division. When a denominated group focus is on the accomplishments of their members and their group’s greatness for God, it supports division in the Body of Christ and hinders the unification of Christ’s Body that Christ prayed for in His unity prayer. This denominated division is not because of a dislike for other believers or their particular movement, but more shocking, it is the nonchalant attitude of indifference to the desire and wish of Christ for the fulfillment of unity in His Church. They are so focused on their own beliefs, bible interpretations, programs, events, and their own members, they do not even notice or consider the disunity with “not of like faith” believers. We must make Christ our focus and experience the awesome greatness of who He is in our lives and love with His supernatural love that His grace provides, before unity within His Body will be able to be realized.

Zeal for Jesus is a noble and good thing but, is boasting about our zeal for Jesus a noble and good thing? Many leaders and congregants alike think it is. People are commended and recognized by their leaders and peers because of their zeal for Jesus. This may lead to an inflated ego and  boasting, this boasting may be by the zealous person or the or by their peers or leaders. Boasting about our zeal for Jesus is a form of boasting in our own greatness of being zealous for Jesus. If we boast in our love for Jesus we have the wrong focus. It means we are “self-focused” on our love for Jesus in our relationship with God by turning our eyes from Jesus and focusing them on ourselves. It is when our eyes are focused upon Jesus and our boasting is in Him do we become “Christ focused” instead of “self centered” and instead of boasting in our love for Him we boast in His love for us. As believers we must recognize that our boasting is not to be “self-centered by boasting on how much we love Him

The kingdom of God is not found in the conferences we may go to, nor is it found in the agenda-event-driven-meetings we may attend. We may see kingdom principles practiced there, we also may observe non-kingdom principals as well. We are called to dwell in Christ and Christ to dwell in us, and that is where the kingdom of God is. By abiding in Christ, God becomes our abiding place and His kingdom is within us to be expressed through us, by His working in us and through us because of our relationship with the Jesus our King. His life living through us should happen in the daily living of our living life and daily living of life is not what happens in programmed-event-driven-meetings.

The Grace Gospel of Jesus is not a OK sinning life living perversion that the law keeper gospel adherents so strongly accuse it as. It does not mean that we can freely indulge in the sinful nature without any consequences. What it means that we have a new identity, we now have the nature of Christ which is not prone to sin therefore, we are no longer trapped by or a slave to sin. Actually is is only by His Grace that we avail of the power to not indulge in sin, for it is by Grace that He provides everything for us to shun sin. Because of Grace the "sin-man" who led us to sinfully sin because of his sinning nature, has been condemned and put to death at the cross and we are given a new nature, the nature of Christ which is "Christ in us the hope of glory". If we crucify our selfish nature we will be controlled by His righteousness because we are being controlled by Christ in us. who is leading us in His ways and as long as we follow His Holy Spirit we will not give i

Answer less, Question more Argue less, Accept more Alone less, Together more Battle less, Build more Complain less, Appreciate more Confuse less, Understand more Cry less, Laugh more Condemn less, Forgive more Despair less, Hope more Division less, Unity more Enemies less, Friends more Frown less, Smile more Fear less, Live more Feelings less, Faith more Fake less, Real more Fret less, Sing more Guilt less, Grace more Hate less, Love more Harm less, Heal more Imprison less, Free more Judge less, Accept more Kicking less, Kissing more Lying less, Honesty more Lead less, Follow more Meanness less, Kindness more Moaning less, Praise more Pride less, Humility more Play less, Pray more Religion less, God more Speak less, Listen more Self-seeking less, Others seeking more Sorrow less, Joy more Shun less, Befriend more Sulk less, Sing more Think less, Feel more Take less, Give more Ugliness less, Beauty more Viciousness less, Calmness more Work less, Rest more Watch less, Do more Worry less,

God is a NOW God, He is not a past God that is finished and done with, He is not a future God that is to be. In fact, our past and our future are a part of God's NOW, because He is a NOW God! God has no past and He has no future, He only has NOW. The reality is that He always has NOW, so don't worry or fret about your past or your future because your past is a part of God's NOW and your future is in His NOW!

If I am not living life in the light of the Grace Gospel of "Love", my spiritual sight is dull and I am in darkness and no matter how much I may brag on my Bible knowledge, theological know-how and my doctrinal dogmatic doctrines, and no matter how many out of context verses I may load my pop-gun with and fire against Love, (God) it will not diminish His love for me or His love for sinners whom some people believe God hates.

Hating, judging, condemning and fear mongering by trying to scare the hell out of people will never cure the disease of fear or remove the fear of hell from people! In fact, a diet of hell consciousness feeds the fear factor and the more fear conscious and devil conscious they become.  Love is the only sure inoculation to eradicate the tormenting, debilitating disease of fear and instill fearlessness of hell.

The cry from within the hearts many believers today is; "I am frustrated, confused and disappointed because of what is accepted as Church today. Many people are finding that simply going through the routine of going to work every week day, doing their own thing on Saturdays and going to their segregated local church on Sunday to get a Jesus fix to last them till the next Sunda y-go-meeting, does not cut it. In contrast, the church in Acts saw dead people raised, all sorts of diseases healed, literally had their buildings shaken by the power of God (Acts 4:31) and got together daily to have fellowship with each other (Acts 2:46). Is the reason for the sorry state that much of today’s church finds itself in, the destructive force called “religion”? Religion found its way into the post-cross Church almost immediately after the Church’s inception. This was mainly due to the traditions which had been propagated for centuries mainly by the pre-cross law keepers, and also by the Gentile

As much as religion talks about the word “community,” our assembling is not a assembling of  a united working community. Showmanship performances might add some hipster flair for the celebrity "pa-star" and the chosen actors, but the focal point of the liturgical week remains theatric. The chosen frozen perform for the pew-warmers that sit, stand, kneel, pray, and sing on command. We might squeeze a little of something similar to community into the gaps, between events with a hierarchical structure. Not only is this a long way from Biblical models of the early Church, it’s a breeding ground for messy group dynamics. Our assembling today, no matter the gathering place, has little in common with the New Testament church. In the first century there was still teaching, prayer, and worship, but the early church was about community, not about religious conformity. Paul’s letters paint a picture of people living together and collectively figuring out what it meant to follow Christ

I wish that at the age of 15 when I became God conscious I was introduced to His grace and love instead of grace plus works where my spirituality was measured by religion by my adherence to the rules and regulations, where after my entrance into his kingdom trying not to sin was paramount. Trying to live up up to the 10 commandments was the order of the day and when you failed you were made to feel condemnation, shame and guilt because you because you failed to live up to God's standard. This coupled with the fact that your relationship with God was fractured by your sin whereby God to turn turn His back and disfellowshiped Himself from you because He being God cannot look upon sin. This false teaching along with the false teaching that God became angry with us and punishes us when we sin was the cause of much confusion, frustration, guilt and condemnation that led to much stress and a false view of our loving, and merciful God.  Along with the false teaching above was the misu

The age we are living has a deluge of communication devices, radio, television, land line phones, cell phones, email, texting, pagers, ipads, computers, internet, yet people have never experienced loneliness and isolation to the degree they experience it today, yet we have more ways to connect and communicate with people than ever before. Why aren’t we a communicating community of communicators? We work along side of people we don’t care for, we are married to a spouse we seldom look at let alone talk to, we have children to whom our conservation is maxed at about 5 minutes a day, we live next door to people we don’t know, we go to Sunday-event-drive-meetings to find fellowship but become just another face in a crowd, communication with God is reduced to a one sided monologue where we do all the talking and expect God to meet our demands, the most popular way people seem to hear from God is from those they deem the spiritual elite who assume the role of being the spiritual pipeline con

There is freedom from the sinful struggles we face in life but it is not in”trying not to sin”, it is in understanding His love and grace and it is living in His love and grace that frees us from our self-effort of “trying not to sin”. Living in His grace and love, we move from sin-consciousness  to Son-consciousness where the power of relationship with the Son enables us to resist the temptation to sin. With our thoughts on Jesus and understanding His love for us, the desire for sin looses its attraction and we begin to experience the freedom from sin that He accomplished for us by His finished work on cross When we realize that even in the midst of our fallings that God was looking on us with love and not condemnation, it changes our whole outlook. We move from the struggle of trying to stop sinning by doing better, to the understanding that He wants us to stop trying and rest in His loving arms. He truly loves us, when we truly understand that, we love Him more and fall out of love

If we follow Jesus, we will not end up adhering to a system of rules and regulations as our pathway to gain and maintain our relationship with God. He will lead us to walk the highways and byways of life sharing His Gospel of Love and grace with the across-our-path people we meet.

The vast majority of people in the world have not placed their trust and confidence in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. What keeps them a sinner is not what the self-righteous doers and don’ters  of the law consider the big sins. They are sinners because of only one sin, the sin that was not taken care of by Jesus on the cross! Already I can feel the heretic chargers coming my way by the moral police of the religious world. “He is a false prophet”. “He is a cancer in the Body of Christ that needs eradication.” “He is the deceived of the deceived.” God has reconciled every person in the world unto Himself through His Son Jesus. On the cross the sins of humanity were forgiven and the grace of God was extended to all of mankind! For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to ALL men. (Tit. 2:11 emphasis mine) ...that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. (2

Barriers to Renewing our Mind. People’s religious belief systems are formed by the religious environment they were born into and the environment they were exposed to in the formative years of their exposure to the religious traditions of their parents and the resulting influence influenced them to accept those religious views as to what the gospel is. Unfortunately the traditions that they held to and still hold to so tightly prevents them from understanding the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ given to Paul to set us free from the bondage of religious traditions. These man-made-traditions, as long as they are believed, are prison bars that encapsulates our mind and are strongholds that prevent our minds from being renewed, thus, the need for the traditions to be torn down to enable us to renew our minds, For if we do not renew our minds the stronghold of religious tradition will prevent us from entering into and understanding the reality of the Gospel of Grace and the freedom it pr

The ultimate test for orthodoxy in most religions today is frozen in the sixteenth century thought of brilliant men who nevertheless had theologies that made it possible to disobey Christ’s commands to put away the sword, love our neighbor as well as our enemies the way God loves us? Why the benchmark of “orthodoxy” is confined to systems of doctrinal theology where people who hold to such theology fail to preach Christ crucified and risen in ways that keep Him central for both gaining salvation and maintaining salvation. Such theology allows for conversion and conformation without transformation and relationship to establish discipleship.  Is it not a deep hypocrisy that we have found ways of preaching Christ crucified without crucifying ourselves, yet crucify others who don't go along with our system of orthodoxy? When we keep the cross central to the understanding of atonement for gaining salvation, but refuse to accept the reason that there is atonement, namely the love o

The busyness of religion creates an “outward doing” oriented people obsessed with their inner fears and perpetual anxieties as they try to achieve an enviable status of spiritually elitism to gain the recognition the religious elite, rather than creating an “inward being" people, reflecting and projecting humbleness, peace and love their doing because of Jesus working in and through them, the true characteristics of of a spiritual relationship with God. Behind the busyness of religious activity is the assumption that a person's doing determines who a person is. The busyness of doing religion, if only an outward expression to maintain spirituality without the qualities of being in Christ, will not produce spiritual maturity, rather it  is an expressionless endeavor of self-effort to boost egoistic superiority. Because a person works harder and longer at religious activity does not mean they are spiritually activated, it may mean they are spiritually depleted and their religious