Category: forgive | Page 2 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

A Time To Heal – A Time To Build Up

“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven:
‭‭…..“A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up;”
‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3:1,3‬ ‭NKJV‬

This is my story of healing my heart and soul and rebuilding my mind and emotions….

For me recovering from spiritual abuse was very personal and private. I knew I needed healing and I needed to repair my relationship with God, which was my first priority. The problem was I didn’t know how to begin. So I started working on developing my relationship with God through conversations with God. To me this was more than just prayer like I had done in the past, this was actual conversation and telling Him about everything that I feared, my anxieties, my anger and I didn’t hold back anything. Then I would spend time in reflection, trying to hear his voice, sitting quietly outside on my deck looking at my gardens and letting his nature calm my soul and emotions, then I turned to scriptures and just began reading and meditating on his word. I felt like I was in that place where God was telling me to “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) .

I also read books: False Holiness Standards, Healing Spiritual Abuse, The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse, and a few more but I can’t remember their titles. I surfed the internet reading all I could find on the subject and joining support groups. I was not going to a church and had not attended a service in over six months so the guilt was very high. Was it guilt from not attending service or was it the guilt and anxiety because I was enjoying not going?

My daughter and I had tried a couple other United Pentecostal churches but there was nothing there but dried up bones and that was six months ago. I knew I was not going back to the UPC. Been there, done that. But I was still trapped in their legalism of dress and hair, simply because that’s all I knew and the only clothes I had. It had been 32 years that I had been in the UPC. I no longer needed to dress this way but I didn’t know how to take that first step to change and that seemed to be the hardest step to take. Although my daughter wasn’t having any trouble giving up standards and she seemed genuinely happy as she searched for a church. She kept saying, Mom, all I want us to be are normal Christians.

Normal was good I thought, problem was I didn’t know what normal was. I did receive a few emails from my former church friends, asking why I left and I should come back and repent and not backslide and blah, blah, blah. I didn’t respond and I unfriended them because I didn’t need the distraction. It wasn’t like I was friendless; I had a lot of good friends at work, just nobody I could talk to about why I left my church and religion.

One of the first things I did was purchase a new Bible, a NKJV, and began to study it with an open heart and mind. I wanted my quest in God’s word pure and fresh so I could see His grace. It was like the word came alive to me and the first scripture I read was: “I am the LORD, that is My name; And My glory I will not give to another, Nor My praise to carved images. Behold, the former things have come to pass, And new things I declare; Before they spring forth I tell you of them.” (‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭42:8-9‬ ‭NKJV‬‬) This gave me a lot of hope that I was still in His will by leaving and searching for truth.

My daughter found a friend, Anita, from Youth Camp online and she explained that we were looking for a church that was “normal” and Anita invited us to visit Crosspoint Church, which was where she went after leaving the UPC. So on Palm Sunday we went and sat in the back row by the door, just in case things got hairy. But from the first beat of the music I could feel the strong spirit of God in a good and loving way; not in a frenzied emotional way. My daughter and I cried all through the service.

When we got in the car to leave, I remember my daughter saying. “Mom did you notice how happy and friendly everybody was?” I told her yes, but it could be a fluke because nobody I knew was that happy about their salvation. Although I saw how Anita was and she was very happy. So we decided to visit again the next Sunday on Easter and bring my granddaughters. The next Sunday was a repeat of the Sunday before and we decided to give it a try and see if this could be our church.

The Sunday following Easter, the church had a ministry fair and I signed up for a ministry called Thyme In A Garden and I registered for a summer ladies bible study to be held in a home close to me. Now I was really putting myself out there because I didn’t know anybody except the associate pastor and his wife and that was only because I grew up with them and my daughters friend Anita.

I’m very thankful for Dave and Ronda because of their wise council to me and the help and love they showed to me during this time. They also had made the same journey I was making. I remember one Wednesday night prayer meeting they both came and prayed for me. None of that grabbing my arms and spitting in my face or yelling in my ears type of praying. They simply put their hands on my shoulders and asked for God to lead and guide me down the right pathway.

After service I asked Ronda how did she overcome the dress code of the UPC? She just smiled and told me I would know when it was time to let go of the past and she assured me when I got rid of the trappings of dress and released the vestiges of legalism, then there would be nothing between God and me except for grace. She said his word would come alive to me like never before because I could no longer hide behind a facade of self righteousness.

A few weeks later I went to my first meeting to Thyme in the Garden and I was a nervous wreck about going into a place I didn’t know. But in I walked and said Hi, I’m Cindy. I was greeted so warmly and friendly by all the ladies and they accepted me right in and I’m still going 6 years later. I met the best group of Christian women that day and they prayed for me after I told them I just left the UPC.

Being a former pastors wife, you know a thing or two about people and of course the shunning and shaming you get when you leave a church. But my biggest shock came from one friend from UPC, we’d been friends for 30 years and I had visited many times since my divorce. She was emailing me at work and I was answering her and I told her that I was going to a new church. She asked me where and I told her and I guess she looked it up online and literally became a wild woman telling me I was backslid if I could go someplace that didn’t teach standards and now I was going to be a reprobate.

Then she finished by telling me we could no longer be friends because we have nothing in common anymore. I couldn’t believe it just five minutes prior to telling her where I was going to church we were chatting away. Now we had nothing in common? I knew I was going to lose friends but I never imagined her. We haven’t spoken since that day and she, along with her family, unfriended me on Facebook. The pain of it still hurts at times but God has given me more friends than I can count now. During this time, I continued to search scripture for reassurance and God never fails:

Do not remember the former things, Nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert. (Isaiah‬ ‭43:18-19‬ ‭NKJV)‬‬

I held on to his promises because I was in uncharted waters.

I again showed up at the home where the summer woman’s Bible study was being done and again God put me in touch with Steve and Helen, former UPC Pastor and wife, who left the organization years ago. God knew exactly who to put me in touch with. I don’t know how many times I’ve called upon them to calm my fears and doubts.

“Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? Who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity? Unless the LORD had been my help, My soul would soon have settled in silence. If I say, “My foot slips,” Your mercy, O LORD, will hold me up. In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul.” ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭94:16-19‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Steve and Helen prayed for me and with me, gave me scriptures to read and taught me about healing and forgiveness. I told them I wanted to start over as a brand new Christian and they even signed up to take a new Christian Bible study with me.

I started feeling more at peace every time I went to church and finally I felt the freedom to get rid of the old clothes and buy new. My daughter and I had fun shopping and there wasn’t a dress or skirt purchased. My daughter was getting ready to graduate from Beauty School, so I was her model to demonstrate a hair cut. I donated 24 inches of hair to Locks of Love and felt so light and free. I was her model for color demo and she made me a beautiful blonde. I hadn’t felt pretty since my wedding day until that day. I sat and looked in the mirror and cried.

I took the church’s Welcome to the Family class, which is a four week course that explained the history of the church, their beliefs, their staff and what was expected from a new member. Again I had to brace myself against the anxiety, but my daughter took it with me so I wasn’t totally alone. During the first class we found out the church came out of the United Pentecostal Church about 30 years ago and my pastor was also former UPC and that explained a lot of the teaching. It wasn’t legalism at all, it was grace and mercy. It was Christ and him crucified. It was no big “I”s and little “U”s. But it was salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. It was humility and servitude and living within your means. There are no thrones on the platform, the ministers sit with the congregation. They teach commitment, connection and contribution. Everybody dresses casual so all that come feels comfortable. They were answering all my questions one by one. It was amazing and wonderful all at once. I finally felt at home, that I was in a safe place and I had a place where people cared and prayed and loved each other.

My final confirmation that I was in the right place for me came in September at our ladies retreat. My pastors wife wanted all of us to go outside and enjoy nature alone with God and our Bibles. I remember sitting at a small table looking over the lake and asking God one more time, is this the place you want me to be? He replied with his word: “You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, And called from its farthest regions, And said to you, ‘You are My servant, I have chosen you and have not cast you away: Fear not, for I am with you; Be not dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’ “Behold, all those who were incensed against you Shall be ashamed and disgraced; They shall be as nothing, And those who strive with you shall perish. You shall seek them and not find them— Those who contended with you. Those who war against you Shall be as nothing, As a nonexistent thing. For I, the LORD your God, will hold your right hand, Saying to you, ‘Fear not, I will help you.’” (‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭41:9-13‬ ‭NKJV‬‬) With tears streaming down, I lifted up my hands and praised him for always being with me and leading me out of darkness into his marvelous light.

That was six years ago and do I still have anxiety from the past? Yes I do and I still have fear from time to time. And yes I suffered with nightmares for several months, but I put my trust in God and he never failed me.

Last year I was reconnected to a dear friend from the church we had pastored and we’d been apart 18 years, but our friendship is closer now than ever before. She has been delivered from legalism and spiritual abuse.

A few months ago I was able to call my ex-husband and forgive him for everything and he started crying and saying he was sorry for what he did. We talked for over an hour about our children and grandchildren.

My daughter met a really nice man and they were married two years ago. She has 3 girls and he has 2 girls, so now I’ve been blessed with 5 beautiful granddaughters.

Has it all been a bed of roses? No it’s not, life is still life. I lost my father and step mother within two days of each other through cancer and pneumonia in October 2011. My mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and is in stage 5-6 of the 7 stages. I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2011 and had to retire in 2016. And I lost a dear uncle to cancer last year (2016). But through all the trouble and tribulations, God has always been there with a comforting word and prayers, visits and ministering from my church friends helped us get through those tough times. There’s been good news, too. My aunt and cousin have accepted the Lord into their hearts and attend church with me. I helped a dear friend escape from my previous church and she is healing and attending Crosspoint, along with her grown children, who were also spiritually abused and hurt. My dear mama has also accepted the Lord.

Yes, when you’ve been in an abusive church for any length of time, things are killed in your heart and soul and things are broken down in your mind and emotions. Eventually you become spiritually crippled and emotionally damaged.

But the Lord gives us a time to heal and a time to build back up. It does take time and patience and a renewed walk with Jesus and the right church and people. And a whole lot of trust in God. It wasn’t easy and it has taken me six years to get this far, but with God all things are possible.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, 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. ‭‭II Corinthians‬ ‭5:17-19‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.

Book Review: Spiritual Sobriety by Elizabeth Esther

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on June 2, 2017.

I love so much of Elizabeth Esther’s writing because what she says fits my experiences in unhealthy churches.

I preordered her book Spiritual Sobriety: Stumbling back to faith when good religion goes bad in spring of last year, around the same time that I interviewed her on my blog.

Recently I re-read my copy before sending it off to a couple of friends who are also unpacking unhealthy spiritual things they learned.

Elizabeth talks about how belief in God can become an addiction, and worship just another way to get a high–she calls this a “transactional use of God.”

She also doesn’t blame us, the religious addicts, for this.

“We didn’t make a conscious choice to treat religion this way. At whatever age we veered off track, we were just doing the best we could.” (p. 11)

“How were we supposed to know there were healthy ways of approaching God when the people we admired taught us that living intentionally with God looked like anything but freedom?” (p. 12)

She argues in the first few chapters that it’s basically a process addiction–an addiction to a behavior rather than a substance.

Elizabeth also says we should pay attention to that drained feeling, the letdown after religious services and events.

“This letdown is an important indicator that something is wrong. If we behaved in healthier ways, we wouldn’t feel the gnawing despair of having spent ourselves on a mirage.” (p. 8-9)

She says that a loving God will respect our boundaries (p. 61), and how she is learning to embrace a sense of mystery and be okay with not knowing everything. And she cautions us against buying into the American idea that our self-worth is tied to our productivity and how that leaks into our spiritual practices, too.

Religious addicts, according to her research, often have problems with excessive daydreaming and living in obsession, fantasy, and magical thinking.

This really resonated with me since I used to use fiction as my drug. Being a bookworm in an unhealthy household wasn’t just me being an adorable, academic kid, it was an escape when I felt like my home was a prison.

Elizabeth also writes about recovering from the shame of a legalistic upbringing, learning to acknowledge a mistake, and move on.

“When I feel myself saying ‘I am a bad person,’ that means I’m internalizing my mistakes,’ she says. ‘I have to remind myself to stop the Shame Brain.'” (p. 78)

“Shame tells us that we are lovable only when we are performing well. Admitting a mistake means admitting we aren’t worthy of love.” (p. 77)

Religious addicts also have the tendency to demand that others believe exactly the same way that they do and feel responsible for saving the world.

“Driven by fear, the religious addict feels responsible for the eternal salvation of every soul. Different beliefs must be confronted (and eradicated!) because they signal a hellish trajectory. In the pursuit of saving the world, the RA behaves as if the ends justify the means. Judgemental rhetoric is a small price to pay for snatching sinners from the fires of Hell, amen?” (p. 89)

We get drawn even further into religious extremism through this thinking.

“For Christians, being lukewarm is almost as bad as not believing at all. We’d rather burn out for Jesus than take the seemingly lazy road of moderation.” (p. 98)

She takes a similar approach to other addiction recovering programs, encouraging recovering religious addicts to avoid trying to fix everything all at once but and resist believing that we have to recover quickly to meet God’s approval.

She references Nadia Bolz Weber, who said, “the sacred rest that is yours never comes from being worthy.”

Once we learn to move away from relying on high intensity feelings and unstable extremes, we can learn healthier ways to cope. Sometimes too much structure is bad for us, too. Elizabeth says that she was raised with so much rigidity that her twelve step recovery program began to harm her (p. 106).

“Whenever we find ourselves slipping into extremes, we need to realize we’re headed toward an unstable state that could compromise our spiritual sobriety.” (p. 107)

These extremes, she explains, might manifest in our lives as

black and white thinking
catastrophic forecasts of the future
attacking tasks with a vengeance
trying to change things that are entirely out of our control
staying up too late because we need to get more done, not exercising (or overexercising)
starving ourselves, overeating
not letting ourselves reach out for help, not talking about what we’re going through
paranoia

Religious addicts may be especially prone to relapse when hungry, angry, lonely, or tired.

Here’s some little pieces that resonated with me.

If you are recovering from a legalistic, cult-like church, I’d say read Elizabeth’s book. She’s been there herself and she understands that recovery is a journey.

Significant Quotes:

“I was consuming God. I didn’t have access to chemical substances – we were intensely devout, conservative Christians – so I used what was available: religious beliefs. I habitually “used” God and all things church to numb pain and feel good.” (p. 3)

“Maybe we identify so closely with our sick selves that we don’t think we even deserve merciful loving kindness. Maybe we agree with those who say we need to be punished (especially if we’ve begun to seek spiritual sobriety). Maybe we’re so tired of trying to stop our addictive behaviors that we figure we might as well go full speed ahead.” (p. 28-29)

“Accepting help for my depression was also the first step toward accepting my religious addiction.” (p. 29)

“I saw that my relationship with God wasn’t a partnership, but one based on fear of punishment. No wonder I’d felt abandoned by God: I couldn’t trust Him enough to let Him love me. No wonder I sought relief in secretive behaviors: when I couldn’t find the love I needed from God, I tried to find it elsewhere.” (p. 50)

“This idea–that a human being represents God for you–is a dangerous lie, because if someone controls your concept of God, he controls everything. But all the control and scrupulosity didn’t take away my deep, real need for love. Once out of the cult, I turned my focus to relationships: seeking friendships and romantic love that would fulfill, heal, and make me whole. My emotional intensity enabled me to become deeply intimate with people very quickly. But when someone got too close, I pulled away–true intimacy was terrifying. I was afraid everyone was abusive. Over time, I transferred my abusers’ traits to my concept of God.” (p. 51)

“We feel safe in the presence of nonjudgmental compassion.” (p. 54)

“If we are to achieve spiritual sobriety and live successful, productive lives, we need to meet a God who tells us we’re unconditionally loved and infinitely valued, no matter what we do, accomplish, or feel in one particular moment.” (p. 55)

“Now I know very little about what there is to know about the true God, and I’m learning to accept that reality. I no longer believe there are simple answers to complex questions, but I’m still sure that God is somehow good.” (p. 73)

“But if our mistakes are strong enough to compromise God’s acceptance of us, isn’t that the same as saying our mistakes are stronger than God? This is similar to believing we are born inherently evil. If that were true, then it would mean God created depravity. But just as it is impossible for God to create evil, so it is impossible that our mistakes are stronger than God’s hold on us.” (p. 78)

“Religious addicts are especially prone to self-neglect because Scripture texts are frequently misinterpreted to equate self-hatred with godliness. Calvinistic doctrines like ‘total depravity’ reinforce self-loathing. God intended for us to need Him because the beautiful plans he has for us to find their fulfillment in communion with Him—not because we’re bad.” (p. 104)

“Frankly addicts expend a lot of energy on not feeling their needs. RAs feel guilty for being human. We believe others are worthy of having their needs met but we aren’t.” (p. 108)

“We learn to hold relationships loosely, lightly. We discover that other people are not ours to manipulate or control—even when we think we know what’s best for them. A spiritually sober person respects the personal boundaries and inherent dignity of others. By unclenching our hands, we actually enjoy our relationships more.” (p. 115)

“We may feel really uncomfortable with the terms self-forgiveness and self-love because people in many religious circles mock those terms as empty pop-psychology.” (p. 116)

“Verses like Proverbs 3:5—“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”—were used to warn us that trusting ourselves would make us vulnerable prey to Satan. But usually, the people quoting these verses to us weren’t teaching us to put faith in the Lord, they were teaching us to trust our church leaders. Ironically, placing blind trust in other humans is exactly what made us vulnerable prey—not to Satan, but to addiction. These leaders didn’t have to earn our trust. We just had to believe in them because, well, they were the leaders.” (p. 117)

“If we are to recover trust in our gut instinct and our ability to sense truth, we must practice owning, honoring, and validating our experiences as true and real. We don’t have to wait for others to corroborate our experience before we trust what we experience.” (p. 118)

“And yes, learning to trust ourselves might mean making some mistakes in relationships but making mistakes is okay, too. It’s how we learn.” (p. 119)

“This is how we forgive abusers: we allow ourselves to see their humanity. I forgave my abusers because I realized that they weren’t evil; they were simply terribly sick people.” (p. 132)

“It seems that some Christians attend church meetings disproportionately to the amount of time that’s actually spent serving others—you know, being the church… Many have become keepers of the aquarium instead of fishers of men.” – Pastor Michael Helms (p. 138)

“This is because true religion and true spiritual sobriety, can never be bought or sold. Spiritual sobriety is the slow, difficult work of walking the narrow way.   Of course, the addict in us may want to make a grand, splashy gesture and commit everything to Jesus. But here’s the thing: Jesus doesn’t want our big, showy, public surrenders. In fact, emotionally fraught, stadium-style altar calls and gospel meetings can do more harm than good because they make a grand, public performance of what should be a private, inner transformation.” (p. 139)

“They simply shouldn’t have so much power that they are free to shame, threaten, and manipulate the flock. The greatest danger to a church’s spiritual health is a pastor-centric church model.” (p. 141)

“If you want to know whether a church is healthy, look at how it treats people who have little or nothing to offer. Are the homeless welcomed? Are the disabled offered a front-row seat? Do children look forward to going to church? Does the socially awkward college student get invited to coffee? Would members of the LGBT community feel safe attending services? If you’re looking for a spiritually sober church, look for grace.” (p. 141)

“The christian church’s ongoing obsession with sex and sexuality, the centrality it has put on controlling and forbidding sexuality in its message of sinfulness, is a suspicious sign that religious addiction and sexual addiction have been regularly reinforcing each other.” (p. 159) – Richard Minor

“It might seem wise to punish ourselves into sobriety; but as we’ve learned, punishment isn’t love. Punishment can teach us an important lesson about real life consequences, but it can’t rehabilitate our souls; that’s what grace is for.” (p. 166)

“Sobriety is about gentle self-examination and, most of all, a desire to stop living in pain.” (p. 158)

You can order Spiritual Sobriety here on Amazon.

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.

Forgiveness and boundaries revisited

A visitor to my blog once asked if forgiving someone for an offense means you must act as though it never happened, especially when the issue in question involves physical or emotional abuse. My answer to this was no, and here’s why.

‎I don’t believe that ‎Matthew 6:14-15 means one essentially has to roll over, play dead and let the offender have their way with them. However, it can hinder our personal walk with God and essentially result in the other person’s abuse or nastiness controlling your life.

In the comment regarding a post I’d made about forgiveness (scroll down to RandomlyLostandFound‘s comment to see the dialogue), I offered the following advice: “I had to finally reach a place where I bore no ill will towards the person in question, and actively prayed for God to restore whatever was broken in their life that was behind the behavior.”

I’m still finding this advice relevant, regardless of who the persistent offenders are. I can decide to no longer bear ill will towards them, and therefore make sure they have no ability to infringe on my personal happiness.

There are times when you may decide that certain people, for the sake of your physical, emotional or spiritual health simply cannot have a place in your life anymore. Yes, that is okay – by walking separate paths from each other, you are making the choice to live your life in a way that keeps their “drama” from impacting you.

I feel that we must still acknowledge the existence of people that do hurtful things and pray for their release from their the harm they cause. However, we must still look to what is ahead of us – anything less diminishes the abundant life Jesus promised.

********
Shop at our Amazon store! As an Amazon Influencer, this website earns from qualifying purchases.

This is my body, broken for you

This is my body, broken for you

I’ve heard these words many times through the years, associated with communion and the cross… and have always considered them associated with forgiveness as a result. It is, after all, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross that offers forgiveness to us all. But is this what the broken body, the broken bread, represents?

The blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin. It was the blood of the Passover lamb spread on the doorposts that showed the angel which homes to pass over, or spare from death. The lamb was slain and eaten, but it was the blood that made the difference in Passover. It’s the blood that signifies covenant. What is the significance of the broken body?

I’m sure there are several good and varying answers, but the one that struck me today is fellowship. Breaking bread in that time was a sign of fellowship offered and accepted. It was a symbol of shared social class- a slave and master wouldn’t normally break bread together, but one would serve the other, or at least I would assume. It also meant relationship. So, by offering the bread for them to share, Jesus called them into fellowship with each other, but more, back into relationship with himself, not as they had been, walking together on earth, but more deeply.

“By his stripes we are healed.” Healed how, of what? There were healings before Christ’s sacrifice. Perhaps the healing was that which God first saw, the healing of broken fellowship with him. The healing of relationship, first broken in Eden. And if so, perhaps the cross is about much more than forgiveness. It’s about fellowship with God, broken and restored. At least in American Evangelical tradition, forgiveness is about us. But restored relationship is about Him.

Love Without Fear

This morning I woke up around 4:40 am as usual, because I’m getting older and I have to go use the restroom about that time. After I got back in bed, I dozed off, but the rest of my sleep was rather light and restless. Over and over in my sleep I kept hearing an old verse that I learned years ago, “perfect love casteth out all fear.”

Now, to be honest, I have been in a process of recovery lately. I’m in the stage where I have been detoxing from religion. I have still been talking to God (though irregularly—but, hey, at least I’m still on speaking terms). I haven’t read the Bible in months, and I haven’t been to church since October. I have altogether avoided any religious influence, other than chats with friends, and support groups that help with my recovery process.

So, needless to say, at first I was rather annoyed that this Bible verse kept tormenting me in the early morning hours. Yet it has nagged at my mind all day long as I wondered, what can that verse really mean? On the surface, it sounds comforting and I surely could use some comfort!

Well, this evening I decided to look it up. I got involved in it the way I used to do. My mind is still trying to wrap around the concepts. I will share them with you, knowing that tomorrow I may not read any more. Maybe this was enough for me to chew on for a long while.

My understanding of 1 John 4

^“7Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.”

The cult taught that “sloppy agape” love was not true Christianity. It taught that one had to follow a three step formula to get saved: Repentance, Baptism in Jesus’ Name, and the “infilling of the Holy Ghost as evidenced by speaking in other tongues.” This verse says that ANYONE who LOVES is a child of God, and KNOWS God. That means that many who we were taught were lost are really God’s children and know Him intimately.

⁸“But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

In the cult, there was a lack of true love. “Love” and acceptance came only with a price tag. You did as the leadership wanted you to do, and you were “loved.” You questioned the rules or the leadership’s decisions at all and you experienced shunning, punishment, hatred and vicious disdain. Yet that very “sloppy agape” that was made fun of from the pulpit—that very thing is what determines a person’s belonging to God, according to these verses! So, here it says plainly that if anyone does not love, he does not even KNOW God! God is love, so if you know God you show love. No love=no God.

^“9God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.”

God showed us what REAL LOVE is—by sending his only begotten son to sacrifice his life for our sins. THAT is real love—it wasn’t conditional based on our performance or righteousness. If we have real love, it has to be patterned after that—Unconditional.

^“10This is real love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.”

The real love is not us loving a God who sacrificed everything for us, because all of us can recognize that he DESERVES our love. Real love is that He sent his Son to be a sacrifice, giving his life, because he saw we were sinners. Sinners—we didn’t deserve anything but death. He gave us what we DIDN’T deserve—that is REAL LOVE!

^“11Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. ¹²No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

Since God loved us that much…Unconditionally…when we did not deserve it in the least…when we were unlovable…when we were filthy in his sight; because of that, we ought to surely be able to love one another. There has never been a gap any wider than that between God and the sinful human. If He could breach that gap with His love, then anything is possible!

IF we love each other, God lives in us and loves through us. This indicates that the opposite is also true. Does this mean that if we do NOT love each other that God does NOT live in us? If he cannot show his love through us, because we do not let His love into our lives, does that mean we are not His?

^“13And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. ¹⁴Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. ¹⁶We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.”

The 13^th verse seems to back up cult teaching that being God’s and His living in us is based upon whether or not we have His Spirit. However, the verses before and after clearly state that ‘God’s love in us is the true proof of belonging to him,’ so, we have to take the verses in context. Because of this, it seems to me that His Spirit being in us or not is not a matter of whether or not we speak in tongues, but whether or not we have and show His love!

It goes on to say that everyone who declares Jesus as the son of God is infilled with God’s Spirit. There is that idea again—the one we were indoctrinated against because it is just too easy. To declare Jesus as the Son of God is not EARNING anything. Humanity cannot seem to grasp the concept of simple faith and getting something as valuable as salvation without effort. Yet, here it is again and again. We have him living in us and we live in him by our declaration that He is God’s Son.

This involves a rudimentary understanding of God’s love—the REAL love of God—the unconditional love. By trusting Jesus to be our Lord and Savior, we have put our trust and faith in that unconditional love. We have given up trying to earn our salvation and we have embraced the idea of His unconditional love that caused him to come and sacrifice His life for filthy sinners, loving us in spite of our condition. To wrap our hearts around that kind of love is a spiritual work of faith that really is quite a bit more challenging to the human mind than the idea of striving to DO in order to receive. Think about it! Isn’t it mind-boggling that the God of the Universe sent his son to die for people who were sinners and were not able to pull themselves out of the filth? He took the place of every sinner in order to show His love and to free us from our sin. He says we simply receive that gift and love Him and others in return.

“God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.¹⁷And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.”

We all know that God is love. It is a basic fact we learned as children. But, here we see that all who live in love really live in God. Think about that for a second. If God is love, then to live in God means to live in love. To have God in your life automatically means you have love in your life.

The more God we have and the more we live in Him, the more perfectly we are able to love others. That completely undoes the life many of us have lived within cults. “Godliness” and “Holiness” cannot mean a list of rules one follows. It cannot then relate to judgmental attitudes and haughty spirits who feel that they are more “godly” than others. In fact, it is completely the opposite! The more “godly” we are, the more we will LOVE others—all others, even those who least deserve it.

“To be like Jesus, to be like Jesus, on earth I long to be like him”…remember hearing it during altar calls where you were guilt tripped into crying and repenting over everything imaginable, including your lack of following the rules?

That is not what being like Jesus means! Living like Jesus here in this world means loving like He loved, showing compassion like he did, mercifully befriending the outcasts. When we live like this, we don’t have to be afraid on the day of judgement. We can come to him with confidence because we lived like him here in this world—overflowing with love towards the unlovable and the lowly.

^“18Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.”

Speaking of the judgment day, when we live in His love and His love is shown through us, we don’t have to be afraid, because this love relationship gets rid of all fear. What a revelation!

Life in a cult is based on fear. Fear, shame, and guilt are running our lives when we are trying to live by the rules and earn our salvation…always trembling lest we somehow fail and fall into the hands of an angry God. No, no, no! That is not what God wants for us!

If we have fear, it is because we think God is just waiting to punish us. That thought pattern shows that we haven’t really had a full experience of his “perfect love.” Wow! Did you get that?

How is it that one like me can spend forty years of life living to the best of my ability to try to please God and thinking that I had to work harder and harder to measure up—only to realize I had no clue who God really is?

When we understand His perfect love, His unconditional love, there is no longer fear. He is going to love me when I am doing well, and he’s going to love me just the same when I’m covered in mud and filth. He is not searching for an opportunity to punish me. He loves me and he wants me to love him and others. There is no fear in that at all!

This is why a chorus I learned after leaving the cult meant so much to me: “I’m no longer a slave to fear, I am a child of God.”

^“19We love each other because he loved us first.”

How are we able to love each other? Because He loved us first and showed us what love looks like.

^“20If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? “

How many liars have you known down through your years in cult environments? I’ve known a lot. I doubt any of them would admit to actually “hating” anyone…but “actions speak louder than words” is an old adage that holds true in this case as well. Lack of love is the same as hatred.

I grew up in a conservative preacher’s home. I heard the verbal vomit about the “liberal” leadership and neighboring pastors who “don’t believe fat meat is greasy.” I heard preachers who claimed to be holy and godly spout out comments like “he’ll never amount to anything,” “he’s good for nothing,” “I wouldn’t give you a plugged nickel for him,” and “I won’t give him the time of day.” These comments were all in reference to other ministers or saints who were in the same organization with the same doctrine, but disagreed over rules and standards of living.

Where is the love in that? Can you say you love God when you talk about another believer in this fashion? When you can be in the same room with another believer and completely avoid talking to him or her because you can’t stand them, is that love? How can you say you love God and behave in this fashion towards his other children?

^“21And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.”

It is a command…the true and only command to indicate our salvation.

What a lot to take in! It really is all in the concept of love. Remember Jesus saying that all the Ten Commandments could be condensed into loving God and loving others? That really is all it is about. It isn’t difficult to measure up, and it isn’t supposed to be an anxiety trip. It is all in that one little word, LOVE.