The Helmet of the Hope of Salvation

 "And take the helmet of salvation ..." (Ephesians 6:17)

Yes, the Helmet, the head gear to protect our minds, our thoughts, our heads.

It's really amazing how many fiery darts come shooting at us every day.

And for the longest time, I was constantly tempted to put out these fires on my own.

The past two weeks, it has fully and finally dawned on me how fully encompassing is the Cross of Jesus Christ!

He has paid for all our sins: past, present, and future.

There is nothing more that needs to be done. There is no more extra work or effort needed to pay the price, to count the costs, to settle the bill.

Jesus dropped the charges because He took on the entire punishment!

If there is any tension, any shame, any condemnation, or sense of fire or anger or bitterness or condemnation in the back of my head, the answer is "It's already paid for."

That has been Satan's scam with me for the last fifteen years. I constantly thought all those bad feelings or those fearful feelings were something that I had to deal with.

All of that was mere aftereffects from wrong believing.

Now that I no longer see bitterness from bad memories through any other lens, the bitterness is all gone!

It was never about suppressing the memories or running away from the bad events in my life. It's ALL about seeing that the condemnation is gone!

"I should have done this!" -- PAID

"I wish I had said that!" -- PAID!

"I can't believe I let him get away with that!"  -- PAID!

"Why didn't I see that coming?!" -- PAID

There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). It's all been paid for, and the feelings, the upsets, all of that was paid for, too!

I cannot describe the wonderful rest and refreshing that I have felt in my mind, especially in the back and the base of my head. There's the ongoing feeling of a river, of a fountain just surging in the back of my head. I feel real peace!

I get the fullness of the Cross, and I now understand why it seemed that so many of my prayers were not answered. The issue was that I didn't see all of those negative feelings as already paid for!

Now, there is no confusion!

Thank you, JESUS!

I Am Going With What God Said, Not Bill W.

The Blue Book of AA tells us that we can be cut off from the sunlight of the spirit.

What spirit was Bill W. talking about?

He was not talking about the God of the Bible, that's for sure. He was not talking about Christ Jesus, who lives in, not just with, every believer in Him.

"Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." (John 14:17)

God's Word could not be clearer:

"Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." (Hebrews 13:5)

It does not matter how you feel. It does not matter what I think.

God's Word is the blessed assurance that we need for this shiftly, quaking, unsure world:

"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)

Daddy God has made it clear that we have complete nearness with Him. We can trust that He is always with us, and we never have to worry about Him leaving us, or walking away from us, or abandoning us.

Where did I stumble in so much of my walk?

I confused faith and feelings. Why? Because I bought into so much of the AA cult, the mixed mixture madness that I could believe in Jesus, and that "Program of Alcoholics Anonymous" would make the Bible practical in my life.

All of that is a lie.

I confused faith with facts, with the stuff in my mind.

God is real. He is spirit, not some figment or filament of our minds or our imagination.

Faith is easy, and because of that ease, man insists on making it all so difficult.

We do not have to give into the bad advice, the counsel of this ungodly world (Psalm 1:1)

We can know and believe in His love for us! (1 John 4:16)

Forget you, Bill W.! I am going with the real W--the Winner--and His name if Jesus!

Alcoholics Anonymous: The Epitome of Galatianism

It's taken me a long time to understand why Alcoholics Anonymous has commanded, and continues to command, such a following even among Christians and in many churches.

I look back on all the abuse and trauma in my life, and I still cannot believe that my parents, especially my mother, fell all in for this cult.

Then I realize that the larger issue has been addressed in the Bible already, in Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.

The Galatian church was not wild and deviant like the Corinthian church. They had not been warmed up with God's love, only to get caught up in busyness like the Ephesian church. They also didn't struggle with the primary and supremacy of Christ, as Paul would address with the Colossians.

The Galatians were mixing Law and Grace. In fact, following the infiltration of Judaizers shaming and provoking the Galatians that their faith in Christ was not enough, the Galatians were going back under law, thinking that adherence to the Mosaic Law, to self-effort, would make them better Christians!

"Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:3)

AA steals much of its verbiage from the Bible. Yes, the operative word is "Steal."

The AA cult's Blue Book talks about being reborn, talks about seeing God as our Father, and we are His children.

But then it adds in that same reference that we see God as our principal, and we are his agent. God goes from being our Father, who loves us no matter what, to someone whom we work for, who can fire us if we don't get the job done.

The Tenth Step madness, the whole thing about taking one's inventory all the time, every day, all of the busyness about "working with other alcoholics" to spread the AA Cult pyramid scheme, all of it is just bringing people back into works, under law, into this treadmill of "never good enough."

It's no wonder that so many people do not get sober in AA meetings, or if they do, they often have to take other medications to deal with the trauma, strain, and mental anguish.

AA corrupts Christianity and displaces the Gospel by removing the grace of God, and turning God's goodness in our lives into something conditional, based on how "hard" we work the steps.

If self-help could save us, then people wouldn't need to read all those self-help books in the first place, and we would not see such a broad, costly, growing industry in the first place!

When Paul scolded, even insulted, the Galatians, he was calling out every form of manmade religion that would work its way into the church:

"O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" (Galatians 3:1)

And this is the crux of the matter: AA displaces Christ Jesus. His sacrifice means nothing. His Finished Work means nothing. The works that do matter, according to vile cult guru Bill W., is working that Twelve Step program, a cycle of self-centeredness and self-abegnation all rolled into one, a program in which flawed human beings look at their never-ending flaws, wondering why their lives never get better, but rather, with all their might working that program, they never seem to see their lives get better.

Reject AA. Go for the Way, the Truth, and the Life!

Why I Loathe Alcoholics Anonymous

"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:11)

For years, I was stepped in this terrible cult called Alcoholics Anonymous.

My mother was a recovering alcoholic, according to her statements, testimony, blah. She worked "the steps" every day of her life, so she claimed. She got sober in 1978, having had a spiritual revelation after drinking a morning mimosa. Something in her spirit told her "You don't have to do this anymore."

And that was the last time she drank alcohol. For the record, I feel compelled to point out that she received a spiritual revelation from God, not help or support from working Twelve Steps. However, the evil genius of Alcoholics Anonymous is to teach people that "It works if you work it" and the Big Book offers this guarantee that people who follow the Twelve Steps rarely fail.

The truth is, my Mom got sober without AA, but she still believed that she had to work the Twelve Steps every day of her life just to get through the day.

On another note, my mother quit smoking when she prayed, when she asked the LORD for help and stopped relying on her own efforts to quit. "I have no faith in me, and I have very little faith in you."

But God can use our little faith to do great things, and my mother was set free from smoking.

Sadly, she was still addicted to AA, and she worked that awful program, until it worked her to death.

Why do I loathe AA? It's not just that that legalistic, self-loathing cult damaged my mother, it's not just that that awful cult turned my mother into an abusive therapy who put her own "recovery" ahead of the needs of her children, her family, and anyone else--even Christ Himself!

I loathe AA because it teaches people to identify with a lie.

At every meeting, every member of the club in the "rewms" will say: "Hi, my name is ... , and I am an alcoholic."

Now, tell me ... how can we really expect anyone to break free of a damaging perversion if we teach people to identify with it? If you are "born" an alcoholic, then you should just drink and drink until you pass out or die.

BUT ... people are NOT born alcoholic. Just as there is no evidence that people are born gay, there is no gene for alcoholic. Granted, patterns of alcoholism do ensue in families, but it has to do with the abuse and trauma which children suffer from their parents, and there is this uncanny tendency for children to replicate the bad behaviors of their parents based on the imprinting and the wrong believing that comes with identifying with one's parents--no matter how bad they may be,

To sum up: no, people are not born "alcoholic." What's more, many people get over alcoholism without taking those ridiculous Twelve Steps.

The AA cult teaches lies to its members. It purports to not be a religious program, and yet members are instructed to turn their will and their life over to a "Higher Power" as they understand Him. Going beyond that, however, this Higher Power is still subject to the Twelve Steps--which have no pattern or value in the Old or New Testaments. In effect, the higher power for everyone in AA is not the Lord God as revealed in the Scriptures.

It's the creepy God of Bill W.'s insidious creation. (For those who don't know, Bill Wilson--or Bill W.--founded Alcoholics Anonymous.) Bill W. is treated with almost divine reverence in the meeting rewms of AA. It's really sickening. Let's state this fact plaintly once more: this "Higher Power" is an invention of Bill W.

It is total idolatry. Christians, Muslims, Jews, anyone who belongs to any faith community should reject AA out of hand. 

But for those who believe in Jesus, who recognize the Bible as God's Word, AA is all the more fully incompatible.

This terrible cult teaches people to identify with a sin, with an addiction, a moral failing.

What does the Bible say about our new identity in Christ?

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." (2 Corinthians 5:21)

We receive a new standing before our Loving Father. God is no more some distant deity, but our Loving Father!

"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." (Romans 8:15)

and

"And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together." (Romans 8:17)

Yes, AA's Big Book makes one reference that "He is our Father. We are His children," but then goes back to leveling adherents with religious demands. The truth is, the AA program does not reveal anything about the Higher Power, aside from what is in the book. This notion of "God as I understand Him" is absolutely ludicrous. If I could understand God, He would not be God anymore, now, would He?

But I digress.

The biggest fraud about the AA cult is that it teaches people to identify with their sins, with their failures, with their faults.

At the top of this post, I quote Romans 6:11, in which Paul clearly declares to the Christian believers in Roman: "Reckon yourself dead indeed to sin, and alive to God through Jesus Christ."

When you are born again, you are no longer a sinner. You are a saint. You are a child of God. Yes, there is training, there is the process of sanctification, which the Holy Spirit works on and in us as we see more of Jesus in the Word (cf 2 Corinthians 3:18)

You don't need to take steps to be one with your Heavenly Father.

In fact, even in the Old Testament, taking steps to God's altar was expressly forbidden:

"Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon." (Exodus 20:26)

If we try in our own efforts to get right with God, we merely expose our nakedness, our sin, our shame:

"But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away." (Isaiah 64:6)

But in Christ, we have the fullness of His work. He declared "It is Finished" (John 19:30)

But you are no longer a sinner, and you are called to no longer identify with sin or any sins in your life.

Alcoholics Anonymous urges people to keep identifying with their sins, to keep rehashing their failures, to keep going to the joyless AA meeting, to keep repeating the empty mantras, to fall in line with the mob mentality, the mob identity.

My mother worked the program all right ... until she ended up taking her own life in 2012. This is the first time I have made this revelation public, but it needs to be said. Anyone who learns that he has to keep looking at his own sins and failures, that he must keep "taking his inventory" to stay one step ahead of an alcohol relapse, is looking at an empty life full of shame, hurt, and loss.

The number of people who have committed suicide while going to the AA "rewms" is pretty staggering, as well. But is anyone really surprised? A relentless program of self-loathing and self-abnegation is not going to produce happiness, joy, or freedom. 

Did I forget to mention that AA members often tout that their program is a "selfish" program, as if that is something to be proud of ...?

At any rate, I hope I have explained fully why I loathe Alcoholics Anonymous. The blood of Jesus cleanses everyone of us from all sins (1 John 1:9), and Jesus rests as the propitiation (full payment) for our sins and the sins of the entire world. If He has paid for all the sins of all the world, then there is no reason for people to rehash their sins or rest in their failures. It's time to stop focusing on ourselves and start focusing on Christ Jesus! Forget the false god of Alcoholics Anonymous and believe in Christ and Him Crucified:

"But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed." (Galatians 1:8)

"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:" (Ephesians 2:8)

If you find that you are still struggling with certain behaviors or bad habits, you just need to receive more favor, a greater revelation of Christ Jesus, and who you are in Christ:

"But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Corinthians 3:18)

and

"1If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. 2Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. 3For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. 

5Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:" (Colossians 3:1-5)

and

"Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord," (2 Peter 1:2)

We don't need AA. Let us have grace, which we receive through Christ Jesus!