God Doesn't Leave Us When We Are Hurt or Angry

 

I will rail against this most perverse aspect of Alcoholics Anonymous until the cult is dismantled for good.

The wretched "Blue Book" (because in no way is is a BIG BOOK) tells us that if we get resentful, bitter, angry, that it shuts us off from "the sunlight of the Spirit."

That is a total lie.

God is not a fiction or a creation of our minds. He is not something that we conceive of, and then hope that He will be there for us when times are tough.

For the longest time, I felt that God was thousands of miles away when I felt bad. For years, I was convinced that I had to "feel love" or "feel warmth" in order to know that God was present.

If I felt bad, felt weird, or I was not focused on Him for whatever reason, I believed that God would go away and I would have to struggle to bring Him back.

That is a total lie.

In fact, when we are hurting, when we feel sad, we sense deep hurt or rejection, we can trust and know that He is near to us!

"The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." (Psalm 34:18)

God does not disappear or go away when you feel bad, mad, or sad.

That is a total lie. In fact, you can know that He hears you and cares for you in your most dire straits, no matter what is happening around you.

I grappled with a very painful conflict a few days ago, and I had this sense that the pain was too great to bear, and that there was no way that I could resolve this problem. I grieved from a sense of betrayal which I had suffered, and I felt that I was all alone.

"I felt ..."

And that is the operative word, and the operative problem.

It's always that we feel abandoned, or that God is far away, but our feelings, our thoughts, our sentiments on the matter have nothing to do with God's nearness in our lives.

He is CLOSE to the brokenhearted. When you feel the most abandoned, that is the point when we must know and believe (not feel) in His love for us (1 John 4:16).

When Elijah wanted to kill himself, the Lord Himself came to Him:

"5And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. 6And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again." (1 KIngs 19:5-6)

Shame on AA for teaching hurting souls this horrible lie, that God goes away when we feel bad, that He is not near, taking care of us through all things!

The Destructive Fraud of Automatic Writing

 

One of the most disturbing habits in AA is the act of automatic writing.

Bill W. would literally sit down at his desk, break out the pen and paper, and he would just write whatever came to his mind.

And he believed that this was a way for God to speak to him.

This is really creepy, dangerous stuff.

My mother engaged in this nonsense frequently, too.

She believed that God was "talking to her" directly, and she would order my sister and me around based on  "The Lord said ..."

When I was a kid, I had no idea how to deal with such abuse.

Now that I am an adult, now that I have heard and received the full Gospel of Grace, I know that I can reject all this madness.

"Automatic writing" is a fraud. Such a foolish practice opens people up to oppression and misdirection from the devil, one's flesh, or the world's foolish thinking.

The last thing that I want to do is trust in my own thinking, lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5)

For years, I struggled with how to walk in wisdom. I tried to figure out what to do, where to go.

I never realized how simple the Gospel is, and how simple are the directions of the Holy Spirit. When we are established in His righteousness, and we receive His peace, He can work in our lives, and give us direction (Colossians 3:15).

We don't need to give into our thinking, or the foolish, demonic ramblings of cult leaders, in order to get to the truth!

God is Not a Concept: He's a PERSON

I cannot stress this most despicable aspect of the AA cult.

Bill W. thought it was a brilliant idea to "Choose your own conception of God."

Right away, that puts the Creator of the Universe in your head. It makes you yourself God, if you really think about it.

I have written so many times, and I will stress this again: I do not want my conception of God.

I want the truth.

I want to know a real Savior, a Redeemer, a Full-On Creator and Consumate Ruler who cares for me, for us, for everything.

For God to be God, He cannot be within the realm of our understanding.

It is that basic.

God is a Person, not some figment of our imagination.

Jesus, our Savior, is the very image of the Invisible God (Colossians 1:15)

It has taken me such a long time to divorce, to separate how I feel, what I am thinking, from the true Presence of the Living God.

Yet that growing reassurance has helped me in so many ways.

I may feel bad, I may feel good, but Daddy God does not stop loving me.

Jesus does not stop being my Savior, my Healer, my Redeemer just because I feel bad.

In stark and disturbing contrast, the AA cult teaches you that God comes and goes depending on how you feel.

That is a serious problem. That is bondage of the worst kind, and we need to resist this lie with as much courage as we can.

"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)

Trapped in a Cult, Jesus Sets Me Free

 

It's easy for me to make fun of people are trapped in weird systems of belief, absolute corruptions of the Gospel and God's Word.

I am really stunned at Mormons, Quakers, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. who believe all these wrong things about Christ Jesus. How can they miss the grace of God so easily?

How could they be so easily mislead? Don't they own Bibles, and haven't they bothered to read the Bible.

And then there's me.

I was in a cult, buying into the lies of AA.

Of course, I was never an alcoholic. I never drank!

It was my mother who was obsessed with AA, who had gone into AA following the recommendations of a social worker in the late 1970s.

What a terrible thing that was.

Yes, she got sober. She often shared the story that during a champagne breakfast in 1978, she was drinking an orange juice sangria, and she felt with her spirit God say: "You don't have to drink this anymore."

Yes, I do believe that God spoke to her. I do believe that His grace was working in His life, as He works in all our lives.

However, the AA cult corrupted a true understanding of who God is.

That is what I grew up with. I grew up thinking that if I take care of my part, God will take care of everything else.

The Gospel is that He is taking care of everything! He is a living Savior who is caring for us!

But, if you go with AA, you are stuck with yours, in reality Bill W.'s, conception of God, and you are stuck on a constant merry-go-round of despair and fear, wondering if you have done enough from day to day, constantly looking at yourself, taking your inventory, trying to fix yourself, when you could not get yourself out of your drinking problem to begin with!

Jesus sets us free. He is THE living Savior. He does indeed transform us, as we behold Him (2 Corinthians 3:18)

We must not allow anyone to give us another picture of God, or delude into thinking that we can come up with our own.

I was just as caught as many others are.

Why?

I was taught this way. I had the Bible in front of me, and I was told to keep trying to be a good boy, to work the program, to follow the steps, to "try harder."

Yet the Gospel is "Rest and Receive!"

Say No to the Cult, and say Yes to Christ Jesus!

AA Fraud: It's ALL Bill W.'s Conception of God

 

Alcoholics Anonymous is a cult.

Why?

Because it's a religious program which threatens its members with a recurrence of drinking and death if they do not strictly adhere here to the Twelve Steps or the "Twelve Suggestions."

Most people get caught, and caught up in, one of their biggest lies:

"Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"

There's a huge problem with this.

Most people have no idea how to conceive of God, and most of the time, they draw their inspiration, or lack thereof, from their parents or their experience.

However, worst of all, with AA, the conception of God which reigns supreme in the meeting is Bill W.'s own conception of God.

Whatever deity you believe in, you have to force him through the Twelve Steps.

The Twelve Steps must have pre-eminence over everything else. They are more important than whatever God you conceive of, because you have to relate to him through those steps!

You are not really choosing your own coception of God, ultimately.

You are believing in Bill W.'s false God.

And this relevation must not be ignored, because churches and other Christian groups have incorporated the Twelve Steps, as if they are a blessed addition or a practical program to implement the steps.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

AA is a cult, a devious, deceptive, dangerous, yet dazzling cult which has grabbed, hooked, and pulled in too many people.

There are better ways to break free of AA and other addictions. AA is not the way.

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!

Spare Me Your Conceptions: I See the Real Savior

God is real.

Jesus is real.

He is a real Savior, seated at the right hand of the Father.

But AA tells you to "choose your own conception of God," as if that will solve all the religion problems. 

Of course, the fundamental problem with this folly is "What forms or animates your conception of anything?"

Most people are going to project their parents or guardians into who God is.

Worse yet, they are going to look to the AA rewmz, including many of the creepy people in those meetings, and ask them or look to them for guidance on who God is.

I will never forget one long-time stepper in the program, who in turn related to me what some monk had shared with him years before:

"I walked up to this Catholic monk, thinking that he's the expert. I asked him 'Who is God?'"

"This Catholic monk said to me, 'I don't know!'"

This welcomed ignorance, this learned helplessnessis accepted, even celebrated in AA circles!

This is outrageous!

I don't want to trust some God who may or may not be there for me. I don't want to trust some "Higher Power" who comes or goes depending on how I feel. I do want to turn my will and my life over to ... myself!

Let's call AA what it ultimately becomes: self-worship. We have our projected, deluded, false notions of who God is at the outset, and then we interact with this notion of who, or what, God is. This is really crazy!

Has anyone in AA ever bothered to take a step back and ask themselves what the heck they are doing?

No, and the reason is simple: for the 3 to 5% that manage to stay sober for longer than 90 days, they really do chalk up their sobriety to the crappy, campy cult of AA. They really believe that working all those stupid steps, talking to sponsors, going to those goddawful meetings turned their lives around.

Of course, one study after another has affirmed that the people who do get sober in AA would have gotten sober anyway, without AA.

We don't need to run to a bunch of steps to set us free. We need to see Jesus, the Author and Finisher of Faith (Hebrews 12:2), who took all the steps to set us free.

We have a living Savior, and therefore we have a living faith. We do not, nor should we, run to the old deadness of the letter, not just of the Old Covenant, but of all man-made inventions to make man good in God's eyes.