Tag: #Christianity

Our Relationship with Christ: A Powerful Analysis

The relationship you have with Christ is like a moving conveyer belt. On one end of this belt, we have God, and the other…Satan.

This conveyer belt is constantly going in one of the two directions. It is never turned off. When we sin, this belt is flipped to Satan. Even when we aren’t “sinning” in a direct way, but our minds get too absorbed in other things, the belt slowly reverses back to the adversary. Each second of every day, we are going in one direction or the other. Almost all of our decisions we make in life will bring us closer or further from Christ.

There is no way to press stop on this conveyer belt. It is in constant movement in one of the two directions. Every imperfection that engulfs us is pulling us in the wrong direction. The goal is to minimize this flipping of the switch…to keep it going only one way: to Jesus the Christ.

The relationship that you develop with God is variable, always changing…never paused. Do not forget this friend. The decisions you make every hour of every day, in some way, impact your relationship with Christ.

Satan Knows You Well

Have you ever been so busy with work, school or other responsibilities, that a week races by…only to have you sitting in guilt at the separation that subtly occurred? If you’re really close to God, even having one full day go by without him crossing your mind sufficiently is enough to create chaos from within. Satan, many times, works quietly and precept upon precept…he doesn’t act in such a way that is extreme or chaotic.

For example, the chances that a man who is close to Christ will wake up one day, out of the blue, with the intention of cheating on his spouse is virtually nonexistent. Satan slowly worked on this man, first sourcing a single thought…. then one becomes two… maybe this man clicked a link online showing him pornography, or replied to a direct message that he knew was crossing a line. Maybe he was absorbing Satan into his subconsciousness when he went off to a bar…or allowed his emotions from an argument to win him over. Satan had this man’s destruction all planned out, watching him as he ruins his life.

Satan is either (debatably) extremely intelligent…or just dumb with thousands of years of experience. I’ve argued this idea in my mind countless times, which direction the arrow points in these two possibilities. I lean to the latter, as the simple fact he attempted (and still does) to engage against a perfect God is a projection of his radical ignorance, stupidity and low EQ (emotional quotient). Regardless, he knows you very well. He is hyper focused on your every move, tediously influencing you by tossing thoughts into your mind…and even initiating emotions to persuade. He is a master at this. He wants nothing more than to see you afraid, hopeless and discontent. He smiles and laughs at every sin you engage in. I repeat, when you do something that you know is against God, Satan is laughing at you.

Just ponder with me, all the horrific acts of violence and evil that’s occurred on planet earth. The nightmarish wars, from the Civil war to World War 2. The Bullying of the innocent. Domestic abuse and broken homes, filled with tears and broken minds. Drug addicts, who would rather die than seek intervention. The drowning insecurities that make young adults feel depressed and pointless. Consider That the same entity who promoted, smiled and laughed (and still does) at these things is the same entity who you side with daily when you sin.

The Anatomy of Sin

Every sin we commit is a reflection of our love for Christ.

The brutal truth is when we sin, we’re essentially cheating with the enemy, and doing it right in front of our savior’s face. Each time we sin, or backpedal the other way, we’re doing nothing unique from what Judas and Peter did. We are rejecting our savior for our own personal gain, pleasure and self-preservation. Did not Judas backstab our God for a little cash? Did not Peter reject he knew the almighty God because he was scared for his reputation and safety? At its core, our moments of sin are nothing less than creating a different path, one that walks opposite of the Savior.

This doesn’t mean we don’t love God because we sin. That would be a logical error…a false dilemma fallacy. Someone can love their peers and still make mistakes; those mistakes do not immediately equate to a rejection of their love for the person. What it does mean is that the relationship needs to improve, grow and mold into something stronger.

Sin isn’t a complicated thing to understand. Sin is anything that is not the will of God in your life. Christians seemingly look at Sin in a very specific manner, which is understandable. Do not lie, steal, slander, fornicate, do drugs, bully etc… But the reality is the mindset of “I didn’t fornicate this past year” isn’t an accurate representation of what sin is. instead of looking at sin as a checklist, consider observing it in your life as a direction, overall. The conveyer belt analogy pinpoints it well. Every “sin” that we committed is only parts to the overall movement to or from Christ.

We all sin, A LOT. Even the most spiritual believers sin daily. Satan has fine-tuned us for destruction, making sure to expound on every weakness we have. He attempts to stomp on the parts of us that are spiritually cracked and fragile. He knows how to manipulate your brain chemistry through thoughts and emotions. He uses this as a weapon against you.

You must Be aware of who you are, of the thoughts that are produced into your consciousness, of the weak spots your soul has. Become a master of awareness, of knowing when Satan is influencing your soul.

Conclusion

Ultimately, when we pass from this life, what many people consider valuable will be meaningless.

The moment we leave this life, in that very moment, your social media accounts will be worthless. The likes, follows and cute Dm’s will be nothing. in that moment, all the petty drama you were involved in will cease. The drug called “validation” will be puffed no more. All the overtime work you put in for more income will be worth as much as the same dirt you are buried in.

The only thing that will matter is how much you turned to Christ for your stresses, pains, fears and salvation. He will be all that matters..

-Jarom

GOD IS IGNORING YOU

The constant prayers you’ve sent off to God seemingly are missing his front door entirely or read with laughter.

For you there are no other options…as nothing is happening.

You never expected for life to be easy. You knew it was going to be difficult and chaotic. You expected to lose loved ones, fail tests and miss out on new job opportunities. You expected it to seem unfair and unequal. You knew that just because you’re a good person…bad things will continue to stalk you.

What you did not expect is getting ignored from The God you worship. This was not part of the plan. This is not what he said. He clearly informed you to come to him for your problems…that he can somehow make things better. You do not expect life to stop having issues, but you do expect God to assist you with guidance and direction.

At times your faith in him was seemingly invincible. It was passionate and courageous. The feeling of waking up in the morning with a God on your side was calming to your screaming thoughts.

“the good ol days” are all that remains of this…as that same faith has lost its foundation. Even when you pray for more faith…nothing happened. When you prayed for any miracle for help…nothing happened.

Nothing is happening.

It’s been months and months of heartfelt prayer with no response. You question God at this point. “Imaginary friend” recycles in your mind from your past experiences in life. “Maybe they’re right…” as the self-pity absorbs the little pride you cling to.

Jesus stood alone

When Jesus was walking with a group of followers that had gathered from his miracles, he began talking to them in regard to the purpose of his supernatural abilities. He wanted to make it clear that miracles had a specific motive…and it wasn’t to toss evidence to unbelievers.

It was received with shaking heads and faithless minds. The followers began to argue about these new teachings. The crowd began walking away, most likely annoyed or bored by Jesus. After the crowd left, only a few men were left standing: the apostles.

Jesus looks over at one of them, Peter, and asks a powerful question...”Will ye also go away?” to which Peter replied “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life”

I imagine that Jesus couldn’t help but smile, as the sarcasm from Peter was based off the presumption that he and the crew obviously knew Jesus was the Christ. How wholesome a situation…the apostles standing firm as the crowd walks away? To stand with Christ is peak beauty in this existence.

If you have enough faith to pray passionately, on a consistent basis for something, then your faith is sufficient to accept that he is in fact listening…but not acting in a way you can see. As each day passes with nothing to show for your time on your knees…you still are forced into the same response Peter gave. Where else are you to go? Can you just force yourself into atheism by choice? Can you reject God and go sin like he doesn’t exist anymore? Can you start believing in another God of some sort to get back at God?

The alternative responses to Peter’s are not things that happen overnight. They take time and effort to do. If you have faith built up in God, trying to forcibly reject him is unnatural and disorderly to your soul. You cannot choose to openly reject the same God you’ve had faith in all your life and not lose the spirit in the process. This radical loss from God is the medication to your soul…and if rejected will give withdrawals that never stop.

God knows that the beautiful worldview you’ve created with him cannot be clicked off like a remote control. You accept a creator, so now you must live your life accordingly. In these difficult times, our response is to live with the frustration, confusion and lacking evidence for a time. God knows what’s like to be a human, he himself was one…so he understands every tear that you shed. He knows why you’re upset, afraid and anxious. He knows you more than you know you.

The whole experience of feeling rejected by God is nothing new. In Psalms 22, we see a man crying to God above for help…with no response. “O my God, I cry in the day time, but thou hearest not…” are the words written on the feeling of frustration and rejection. Just like you, this individual was confused by his creator’s stoic position to his prayers, yet we can see that the idea of giving up or rejecting God was not even a consideration. The individual was going to push with nothing to put his faith in… stand strong even with no response. “My God my God, Why hast thou forsaken me?” are the opening words to this chapter…the same words repeated by Christ as he suffocated on the cross. While many scholars have different interpretations of why Jesus repeated these words, I believe that Jesus needed to experience a full rejection of God and push through to finish his mission on earth. Could Jesus have changed his situation while on the cross? Of course he could have. If, during this short period of loss from his father he decided to change his mind…. he easily could have done so. As he hung on a cross, trying to take in oxygen for his dying body, his father left him alone entirely for a short time which forced Jesus into the deepest depths of darkness. Considering Jesus was also human, he experienced confusion by this loss. It did not stop him, though. The savior continued with his mission and pushed through the deepest darkest moments in the history of mankind. If there ever was an example to all of us on what to do when it seems God has rejected us, or left us, this is the moment we need to remember.

Keep moving forward with Christ. You know he lives, so accept that this spiritual drought is necessary for something in the future. Like Peter said…what is the alternative? To openly reject your creator? To run to sin, which in return will punish your already frustrated soul? No. Stick close to God and his word…and God will arrive with blessings from heaven on his time.

-Jarom

“Pick up your cross and follow me”

Life is brutally unfair. It grabs us by our necks and tosses around like ragdolls when it wants. Even though we believe in human equality…life sure doesn’t seem to agree with us. God fearing people die daily in this world…which forms angry atheists and confused believers. Human suffering is mean, cruel and stoic towards all of us.

Independent of all the external chaos that occurs in the world, let’s consider the internal chaos we feel… our minds. From deep insecurities to screaming anxiety…the human consciousness is seemingly everything but calm. “We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality” says the ancient stoic Seneca. Addictions from sex to drugs mock our peace…leaving us lonely and confused.

I know without a shadow of a doubt that you, (yes you) reading this has something causing you anxiety or fear. There is something that you are overthinking about more than you should. You most definitely have insecurities that you try to hide or hate. You might even be run over by physical suffering…which can smother your smile. There is virtually no way you’re not suffering in some way, shape or form. We all hold hands together as a human species with these universal feelings. Suffering is a part of us, rather we like it or not.

The title of this page was one of the most potent scripture verses to my conscious, a profound stab to my frustrations as a new believer. What is the cross he is referring to when he says, “take up your cross and follow me?”

We all have our own cross, which represent our personal chaos. The crosses are very unique to each one of us, each holding varies weights of anxieties, addictions, depressions, fears, insecurities and physical pains. Some people have a cross with a recent divorce…others have one with a life-changing medical diagnosis. One person has just lost a loved one while another is suffering from severe depression with no outlet. The crosses are heavy for all of us. It simply hurts to carry.

Christ tells us to pick up this heavy cross anyway, to put it on our backs and follow him. We toss our crosses on our backs, lift up and slowly stroll towards him. He is constantly looking back, smiling and verbally motivating us. He is leading, we are following. The walk towards him is dreadful at first. It is a heavy burden on our back. Every so often we begin to stumble over, but right before we do someone grabs the end of our cross and holds it up for us. It is Christ, tediously making sure we don’t fall down. He even holds our cross entirely at times…making sure we catch our breath. He then gives it back to us…so we can keep on with our journey.

Christ told us two things that align with the above. 1. To pick up your cross and follow him 2. To come to him if your burdens are heavy and he will give you rest. Picking up your cross is not easy, to walk to Christ is even harder. This my friends, is using faith. Faith is hard, scary and uncomfortable. Faith is also something we all are capable of if we open our hearts.

As you use faith, “let go” for Christ…he will be the ultimate support system…constantly making sure your cross is being held and carried behind him. The beautiful aspect of all of this is in regard to our savior: He, at one point in his existence, carried a monumental cross on his back…one that is incomprehensible to our human minds. The atonement and the physical death of our savior was a cross that was astronomically heavy. He pushed and accomplished his journey.

It’s important to note that our sufferings in life will not be removed because Christ is in our lives. He wants us to grow…and the only way to grow is through experiences that aren’t fun. The crosses we carry are still on our backs…he doesn’t remove it and carry it for us.

One needs to look no further than Paul as the example, who lived a downright horrible life. He was in a chaotic shipwreck. He had no food and clothing much of the time. His needs were far from met. His old friends mocked him for his dramatic change in beliefs. All of these terrible things only to be beheaded under Roman emperor Nero for his faith.

From a humanly perspective, one who reads this would read a depressing life of turmoil and destruction. From a heavenly perspective, we can read this and see that Paul was genuinely content, fulfilled and happy all along. He even wrote on the beauty of his suffering and his peace from within. Friends, our suffering will definitely continue all around us. We will still lose loved ones. We will still feel heartbreaks. We will still live in a world with accidents, natural disasters and war. With this being said, Christ can come in and change you from within…bringing you the same peace Paul felt. Once your inner world is peaceful, the outer world has no power over you.

This isn’t to say that God above cannot change and influence situations for our good, which he does at times. It is just to say that many times he wants us to endure and be in chaos in this world…and allow him to heal, fix and bless us from within. The sooner you walk to Christ with your cross…the sooner he will change you in ways you cannot comprehend.

-Jarom

There is no evidence for God

Consider a human thought. Every moment of every day you walk this earth, there is a “thought” that appears into your consciousness. Not a moment exists when your mind isn’t accepting a thought in this life unless you’re unconscious or dead.

I used to be an atheist…a strong one at that. I firmly believed that we were nothing more than evolved primates. I firmly accepted that everyone I passed on the road was just star dust…. that there was no real purpose to anything. Even though we as humans can discover subjective fulfillment for ourselves through hobbies, family or career…overall nothing actually mattered in the long run. If everything, one day, will cease to exist…then overall humanity has no real purpose.

As an atheist, I would demand evidence for belief. Science was my God…even though science is constantly changing. It changes so much because really, in the grand scheme of things, we know so little. For some reason, we as humans feel we know so much…when the reality is we are clueless.

Let’s take human consciousness, for example. It baffles me just how lost the most intelligent professors are on this subject. A five-year-old is equally knowledgeable on what consciousness actually is as those with PHD’s. We all start at square one when it comes to knowing what consciousness is…it’s a mystery to even the top neuroscientists in the world.

As an atheist I’d watch countless interviews on consciousness…on what it is. I was blown away on how atheistic scholars would try so hard to make sense of it. To reject a soul in exchange for other, somewhat ridiculous ideas. Slowly I began to see that many scholars have internal biases against a higher power, that the idea of one isn’t something they would want to whisper to themselves. They wouldn’t even flirt with the idea of a “soul”. Not possible, door was shut in their minds to this.

Consider that when a professional performs an autopsy on a brain…he doesn’t see their thoughts or memories. All that is seen is a blob called the “brain”. Wouldn’t it be interesting to lay out someone’s thoughts on a table and examine them? We cannot. This leads me to the point of this post.

There is zero evidence for a human thought. We cannot touch one. We cannot see one. Microscopes cannot catch them in its lenses. How do we know that a “thought” is real? Because we experience them. If we did not experience thinking, we could not prove it exists in any way. Science couldn’t do it for you either. Science can only prove that a brain is active, that it has thoughts, not what they are. I have faith that you’re thinking when I talk to you because of your human behavior, your eye contact, facial expressions, verbal response etc… not because I see your “thoughts” appearing in my eyesight. ultimately, science hasn’t a clue what a thought is…there isn’t evidence of one except the experience we have in our heads. This isn’t just me saying this, every top professor of neuroscience would agree with me.

How do we know that God exists? Do we see him?

Do we touch him with our hands?

Does a microscope catch him in its lenses?

Has science released peer-reviewed papers on him?

NO.

we know he is real because we experience him. Our experience is all we have for God as well as our thoughts, memories and feelings.

Logically, if someone denies God because there is no evidence…he must also deny his own thoughts and others…because there is none for that either.

-Jarom