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Jesus’ “Lost” Years The people of India are of extreme importance to God – so much so that the eternal Son of God visited this planet in human form specifically to offer his sinless life as the only sacrifice holy enough to atone for human spiritual shortcomings so that Indians could have full access to the terrifyingly holy Almighty God of the universe. The same is true for every tribe and language and people group on this planet: Revelation 5:9-13  They sang a new song, saying, “You are worthy to take the book, and to open its seals: for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood, out of every tribe, language, people, and nation, and made us kings and priests to our God, and we will reign on earth.” . . . As the risen Lord, Jesus not only visits India but reigns in the hearts of large numbers of Indians – and Chinese, Africans, Europeans and so on. But did Jesus visit India sometime within the short period between the time he reached maturity and the age of thirty when he commenced the ministry in Israel that lead to his sacrifice in Jerusalem? Ground Rules I have a dilemma. Things I wish I could instantly download into your mind take decades of study to fully appreciate. I am keen to avoid weighing down anyone with details and yet it is ignorance of those very details that causes people to entertain notions that do not fit the facts. I have relegated most of these details to links scattered throughout the webpage but if you really want truth, these links need to be read. Then you will be armed with the unadulterated facts on which to build your own conclusion. Unless you prefer a meaningless fantasy trip, I am forced to keep citing the most ancient, most attested and most historically accurate documents we have about Jesus. There are several criteria one must consider: * How soon after Jesus’ death the document was written * The time gap between the writing of the account and the earliest surviving manuscripts * The number of surviving ancient manuscripts * The degree of agreement among the ancient manuscripts * The extent to which geographical, cultural and historical details in the account agree with facts known from other sources * The reliance upon eyewitnesses and careful investigation of the facts (a rarity in ancient times). The documents that stand head and shoulders above any other contenders happen to be the ancient library now known as the New Testament. For an example of the care taken, see Luke 1:1-4. For confirmation that these documents are without rival, see F. F. Bruce The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? To avoid giving an inflated impression of how frequently Jesus did or said various things, I have striven to avoid citing additional accounts of the same event in other Gospels. Although in authenticity and dependability, no other source of information about Jesus remotely approaches the diverse writings that now form the New Testament, a few skeptics wonder whether all this detailed documentation of Jesus’ life and teaching might have somehow been doctored by Jewish sympathizers to remove all reference to India and to Indian influence on Jesus. We will see later why it is not feasible to suppose such doctoring of multiple accounts (all of which we now know were completed close in time to the events they record and accurately preserved since then). But here’s the clincher: how could those who compiled these records think of themselves as faithful followers of Jesus – as the writers clearly considered themselves to be – while being so ashamed of Jesus as to deliberately mutilate accounts of his teaching? More disturbing still: it is an insult to God himself to suppose that these ancient accounts of Jesus’ ministry might have prejudicially removed reference to key aspects of Jesus’ life. If Jesus’ staggering claims are true, such as “No one comes to [God] the Father, except through me” (John 14:6), for Almighty God to have allowed the record of Jesus’ message to have been lost or distorted for subsequent generations would be a tragedy beyond belief. Moreover, Jesus declared, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13:31). What makes it such an insult to query the accuracy of the records is that Jesus, after devoting considerable prayer, handpicked the twelve apostles to personally train them as the custodians of his message and he commissioned them to “Go into all the world, and preach the Good News to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). To them he declared, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8). If being Jewish created a bias that Jesus objected to, why did he entrust exclusively to them the responsibility of being the earliest, most critically important custodians of his message? In fact, Jesus kept insisting that it was no historical accident that certain people were the original carriers of his message. “You didn’t choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you . . .” (John 15:16) he told the select few of whom he said, “Yes, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations. But when they deliver you up, don’t be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you” (Matthew 10:18-20). And at the end of his earthly mission it was to them that he said, “. . . As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. . . . If you forgive anyone’s sins, they have been forgiven them. If you retain anyone’s sins, they have been retained” (John 20:21, 23). On top of that, Jesus proclaimed that after his death he would always be with them through God’s Spirit and that they would be divinely empowered with special abilities that would supernaturally equip them both to accurately recall Jesus’ message and to understand its spiritual meaning: John 14:16-18, 26; 15:15, 19-20, 26-27; 16:12-13, 15  I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Counsellor, that he may be with you forever,— the Spirit of truth, whom the world can’t receive; for it doesn’t see him, neither knows him. You know him, for he lives with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. . . . But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,  he will teach you all things, and will remind you of all that I said to you . . . . No longer do I call you servants, for the servant doesn’t know what his lord does. But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you. . . . If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, since I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. . . . When the Counsellor has come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me. You will also testify, because you have been with me from the beginning. . . . I have yet many things to tell you, but you can’t bear them now. However when he,  the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth . . . . he takes of mine, and will declare it to you.  (Emphasis mine.) If their Jewish background gave them a bias that Jesus objected to, why did he entrust exclusively to them the responsibility of being the earliest, most critically important, custodians of his message? Furthermore, in one of the only recorded instances of Jesus ever conversing with a non-Jew, he declared, “You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). Since Jesus opted not to leave behind any of his own writings, almost nothing in the universe was as critical as the responsibility of those he chose to transmit his message to subsequent generations. There is even a sense in which their role was greater than Jesus’ because if they failed it would have rendered Jesus’ life and death a waste. If Jesus got wrong his choice of people to transmit his message, he is not the eternal Son of God but a fallible human who could neither foresee nor influence the future. This would make him unworthy to be followed as a spiritual leader, much less worshipped. In reality, Jesus always knew exactly what he was doing. He knew, for example, that Judas would betray him and that Peter and the other disciples would deny him but afterward be faithful. To zero in on the bare facts of Jesus’ teaching and shun Christian interpretation or bias, I will primarily cite the actual recorded words of Jesus and mostly side-step mentioning comments in the Gospels make by the authors. I will also largely avoid mentioning other significant early Christian writings (the rest of the Christian Bible). This voluntary restriction is despite the fact that: (1) they reinforce my arguments (2) besides the Gospels themselves, these are the writings of people who were more familiar with Jesus’ life and message than anyone else from whom we can gain information and the ones to whom Jesus entrusted the transmission of his message. The Unique Value of the Apostle Paul’s Writings to Understanding Jesus As a highly intelligent and well informed Jewish scholar authorized by the Jewish hierarchy to stamp out Christianity, Paul had full access to all the dirt on Jesus (if any existed) and all the arguments against the Christian interpretation of Jesus’ life and message. What makes this particularly relevant is that any perceived influence on Jesus by a foreign religion would have been seen as scandalous by orthodox Jews. It would have so infuriated them as to have dominated their whole attack on Christianity. The first of the Ten Commandment is “You shall have no other gods before me,” and the second is “You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God . . .” (Exodus 20:2-5). Although the Apostle Paul was not a disciple of Jesus while Jesus was living, Paul’s message was fully approved by Peter and the other disciples: Galatians 2:1-2,6-9  Then after a period of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. I went up by revelation, and I laid before them the Good News which I preach among the Gentiles . . . But from those who were reputed to be important (whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God doesn’t show partiality to man)—they, I say, who were respected imparted nothing to me, but to the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the Good News for the uncircumcision, even as Peter with the Good News for the circumcision (for he who appointed Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision appointed me also to the Gentiles); and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, they who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcision.   Acts 9:26-28  When Saul [also known as Paul] had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared to them how he had seen the Lord on the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus. He was with them entering into Jerusalem.   Acts 15:2, 4 , 7 ,12-13,22,25-26   . . . they appointed Paul and Barnabas, and some others of them, to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question. . . . When they had come to Jerusalem, they were received by the assembly and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all things that God had done with them . . . When there had been much discussion, Peter rose up and said to them . . . All the multitude kept silence, and they listened to Barnabas and Paul reporting what signs and wonders God had done among the nations through them. After they were silent, James answered . . . Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole assembly, to choose men out of their company, and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas . . . it seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose out men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.   2 Peter 3:15  Regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you.   Although I have primarily limited myself to the words of Jesus himself, it turns out that there are no obvious contradictions between his actual words and the Jewish Scriptures and the rest of the New Testament. I should confess my own bias. I am not in any sense a Jew; neither (to my knowledge) by remote ancestry, nor by religion. Neither am I an Indian. It might at first seem strange but one does not have to study Jesus’ life and teachings for long before discovering that no genuine examination of whether Jesus visited India can avoid frequent citations of the Jewish Scriptures. These are the writings that today are commonly called the Old Testament; the part of the Bible written before Jesus was born. I don’t expect anyone to accept what I say until carefully considering the evidence presented deeper in this series of webpage but, as surprising as it might initially seem, it turns out that what makes an extensive understanding of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament) so critical is not only the unique role Jesus assigns to it as the prime source of spiritual truth, but there is a real sense in which these Jewish Scriptures are the dictionary containing all the definitions of the words Jesus used. The Plunge If we let our imaginations run wild, we might guess that Jesus did spectacular things prior to age thirty – when the records say he was anointed and empowered for ministry by the Holy Spirit of God. Such flights of fantasy, however, are not supported by the facts. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which by his contemporaries’ standards was a long way from Nazareth, and he spent his early days in Egypt, yet he spent so long in Nazareth before he turned thirty that much is made in the historical accounts of the fact that that he was known as Jesus of Nazareth. Nazareth was in the province of Galilee and so there are other references to Jesus being from Galilee . Galileans had a distinctive accent that differed from other parts of Palestine. I spent just a few months in an Asian country and returned home with a different accent but there is no hint that Jesus’ accent differed from other Galileans. Reincarnation teaches a much closer connection between animals and humans than most other religions teach. It is partly because of this that although there is a huge range of conflicting Indian religions, vegetarianism is fundamental to most of them. So if Jesus were not a vegetarian he could not be accepted by those religions. And if Jesus rejected vegetarianism, he would not only be indicating that he disagreed with those religions for which vegetarianism is a fundamental tenant; it would be hard to claim that he was even mildly influenced by them. This makes another webpage in this series vitally important: Was Jesus a Vegetarian? The time for the truth about Jesus to be fully revealed was not in Jesus’ younger days, nor even his latter earthly years but after his death and resurrection. This applied even for Jesus’ inner circle, who were granted spiritual insights, interpretation of parables and so on that were denied everyone else (Mark 4:10-11). He told them: John 14:19-20, 25-26; 16:7, 13-14  Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more; but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also.  In that day  you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. . . . I have said these things to you, while still living with you. But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,  he will teach you all things  . . . Nevertheless I tell you the truth: It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I don’t go away, the Counsellor won’t come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. . . . However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth . . . He will glorify me, for he will take from what is mine, and will declare it to you.   Note that it was not until after Jesus’ resurrection that the following exchange took place between Jesus and his apostles:   Luke 24:45-48  Then he opened their minds, that they might understand the Scriptures. He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. . . .”   Here’s further confirmation:   John 12:16  His disciples didn’t understand these things at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things were written about him, and that they had done these things to him.   Being kept in the dark until after Jesus’ resurrection was even more emphatic for Jesus’ other Jewish contemporaries:   Matthew 12:15-16   . . . Great multitudes followed him; and he healed them all,  and commanded them that they should not make him known .   Matthew 16:16-17, 20  Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. . . .”  Then he commanded the disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ .   Mark 9:9  As they were coming down from the mountain  [where Jesus had been transfigured], he  commanded them that they should tell no one what things they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead .   And keeping things hidden until after Jesus’ resurrection applied still more to people who were not Jews:   Matthew 10:5-6  Jesus sent these twelve out, and commanded them, saying, “Don’t go among the Gentiles, and don’t enter into any city of the Samaritans. Rather, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. . . .”   The Hebrew word Messiah and its Greek equivalent (Christ) both mean “anointed by the Spirit of God”. Since the entire concept in based on the Jewish Scriptures, one must understand that Jewish kings, priests and prophets were anointed. Here are some examples:   Exodus 30:30-32  You shall anoint Aaron and his sons, and sanctify them, that they may minister to me in the priest’s office. You shall speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘This shall be a holy anointing oil to me throughout your generations. It shall not be poured on man’s flesh  [i.e. on ordinary people] , and do not make any like it, according to its composition. It is holy. It shall be holy to you.   Leviticus 21:10, 12  He who is the high priest among his brothers, upon whose head the anointing oil is poured . . . the crown of the anointing oil of his God is upon him. . . .   1 Samuel 10:1, 6-7  Then Samuel took the vial of oil, and poured it on his head, and kissed him, and said, “Hasn’t the Lord anointed you to be prince over his inheritance? . . . Then the Lord’s Spirit will come mightily on you, and you will prophesy with them, and will be turned into another man. Let it be, when these signs have come to you, that you do what is appropriate for the occasion; for God is with you.   1 Samuel 16:13  Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the middle of his brothers. Then the Lord’s Spirit came mightily on David from that day forward. . . .   The anointing was the time when they were called by God for a special role and endowed with the spiritual resources to fulfil that calling. Jesus was not just anointed, he was  the  anointed one– the one uniquely called and spiritually empowered as priest, spiritual King of kings and the prophet  par excellence .   Matthew 16:13-17, 20  Now when Jesus came into the parts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” They said, “Some say John the Baptizer, some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.”  [Note how even while Jesus was on earth all sorts of myths and mistaken ideas about Jesus developed but Jesus cut through all of this by ensuring his apostles correctly understood.] He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ  [ anointed one], the Son of the living God.”Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. . . .” Then he commanded the disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus the Christ.  [Note again how the truth about Jesus was kept from the masses until after Jesus’ resurrection.]   The time when Jesus was anointed – spiritually empowered to minister – was when the Holy Spirit came upon him at his baptism. Note that the following is one block of Scripture, separated only by my comments in square brackets:   Matthew 2:19-3:3  But when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Arise and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel, for those who sought the young child’s life are dead.” He arose and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there. Being warned in a dream, he withdrew into the region of Galilee, and came and lived in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.” In those days  [ie the days when Jesus was still in Nazareth. There is not the slightest hint of a gap when Jesus was not living there.], John the Baptizer came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” For this is he who was spoken of by Isaiah the prophet, saying, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, make ready the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.”   Then follows a description of John’s ministry, followed immediately by:   Matthew 3:13  Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. Let’s examine Luke’s account of what happened: Luke 3:21-23  Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus also had been baptized, and was praying. The sky was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove on him; and a voice came out of the sky, saying “You are my beloved Son. In you I am well pleased.” Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old . . . Time Out I will continue with Luke’s narrative shortly but first I should comment on the above and also quote from elsewhere to show it dovetails perfectly other ancient accounts.   Note that the text says: “Jesus himself was about thirty years old  when he began his ministry ”. His ministry did not begin until he was baptized in the Spirit at age thirty.   According Jewish Scriptures the age of thirty is significant. It was the age at which, God’s chosen ones, born for the role of serving God in his temple (Levites), were allowed to commence service (Numbers 4:3). It was the age at which Ezekiel began his prophetic ministry (Ezekiel 1:1) and it was age that Joseph “stood before Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Genesis 41:46). Joseph was one of many people in the Jewish Scriptures who had aspects of their lives that were divinely crafted to bear similarities to the Messiah.   This is consistent with John’s Gospel which says about him turning water into wine:   John 2:11  This beginning of his signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.   This was the  first  of his miracles.   It is also consistent with what we read in Luke’s second book,  Acts:   Acts 1:1-2  The first book I wrote, Theophilus, concerned  all that Jesus began both to do  and to teach, until the day in which he was received up . . .   After Judas’s death, it was decided that someone highly familiar with Jesus’ entire ministry must replace him. Note the italicized words:   Acts 1:20-22   . . . ‘Let another take his office.’ “Of the men therefore who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,  beginning from the baptism of John , to the day that he was received up from us, of these one must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”   Despite Jesus having great plans for his disciples, he told them after his resurrection to remain where they were and simply wait until they were empowered by the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4-8). The same applied to Jesus, their Leader and Example. He, too, had to wait – put his ministry on hold – until the spiritual empowering that took at this baptism. Timing was everything to Jesus. Consider this exchange with his brothers:   John 7:3-8  His brothers therefore said to him, “Depart from here, and go into Judea, that your disciples also may see your works which you do. For no one does anything in secret, and himself seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, reveal yourself to the world.” . . . Jesus therefore said to them, “My time has not yet come . . . my time is not yet fulfilled.”   Again, when his mother sought a miracle he said:   John 2:4  Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with you and me? My hour has not yet come.” One might guess that because Jesus taught and performed miracles after his baptism that he must also have acted that way beforehand. Nevertheless, not only is this contrary to the evidence, the records provide powerful spiritual reasons for his baptism being a watershed moment that radically altered Jesus. Even after his anointing, however, Jesus was very careful to restrict his ministry not just geographically but even ethnically. Despite his immense compassion for all people, consider his extreme reluctance to work a solitary miracle for a non-Jew: Matthew 15:22-28  Behold, a Canaanite woman came out from those borders, and cried, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, you son of David! My daughter is severely possessed by a demon!” But he answered her not a word. His disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away; for she cries after us.” But he answered, “ I wasn’t sent to anyone but the lost sheep of the house of Israel .” But she came and worshiped him, saying, “Lord, help me.” But he answered, “It is not appropriate to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” But she said, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Be it done to you even as you desire.” . . . (Emphasis mine.) Likewise, despite his stupendous compassion – and plans – for every people group on the entire planet, while Jesus remained on earth he instructed his disciples to limit themselves to Jews: Matthew 10:6-8  Rather, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, preach, saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons. . . . Jesus knew the time would come (after his resurrection) when he would commission his disciples to go into the entire world and he would go with them in spirit and through them preach and work miracles in every nation (Matthew 28:18-20; Mark 16:15-20). As we have seen, however, timing was critically important to Jesus. Back to Luke’s Narrative We had been quoting from Luke’s first book about Jesus’ baptism. Let’s return to that text. It states that immediately after his baptism, Jesus, filled with the Spirit, was led into the wilderness where he was tempted: Luke 4:1-2  Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. . . . Immediately after an account of the temptations we read: Luke 4:13-30  When the devil had completed every temptation, he departed from him until another time. Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and news about him spread through all the surrounding area. He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all. He came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. He entered, as was his custom, into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. The book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. He opened the book, and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim release to the captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to deliver those who are crushed, and to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” He closed the book, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began to tell them, “ Today , this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All testified about him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth, and they said, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will tell me this parable, ‘Physician, heal yourself! Whatever we have heard done at Capernaum, do also here in your hometown.’ ”  [The people Jesus had grown up with were so unfamiliar with Jesus’ miracles that they wanted to see some for themselves.]  He said, “Most certainly I tell you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown. . . .” They were all filled with wrath in the synagogue, as they heard these things. They rose up, threw him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill that their city was built on, that they might throw him off the cliff. But he, passing through the middle of them, went his way. Note how this passage emphasizes the importance of Jesus’ anointing and that it had only recently occurred. Also note in the above that those in his hometown had not seen Jesus’ miracles. Consider also the following that took place later: Mark 6:1-5  He went out from there. He came into his own country, and his disciples followed him. When the Sabbath had come, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many hearing him were astonished, saying, “Where did this man get these things?” and, “What is the wisdom that is given to this man, that such mighty works come about by his hands?  [Here again we find that those who best knew Jesus prior to his baptism were flabbergasted that he was now performing miracles and displaying spiritual wisdom. (And we shall later see that the wisdom they refer to was thoroughly Jewish and showed no trace of Indian wisdom.) It is yet another proof of the radical transformation brought about by Jesus’ spiritual anointing when he was empowered by the Holy Spirit.]  Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judah, and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?”  [They considered a person’s family to be a fundamental part of his background and who he is and everything they had gleaned about Jesus over all those years prior to his baptism screamed that there was nothing special about him.]  They were offended at him. Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own relatives, and in his own house.” He could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people, and healed them. The so called “lost years” were simply years Jesus spent in Nazareth during which his life was so ordinary that there was nothing worth mentioning. We quoted Matthew chapter 2 earlier, where it states that while, still a child, Jesus went to live in Nazareth. Jews were expected to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem during the feasts and there is no hint that after his brief exile in Egypt as a baby, he ever again went further from home. Luke gives this same impression: Luke 2:39-42,51-3:2  When they had accomplished all things that were according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth. The child was growing, and was becoming strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. His parents went every year to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the feast . . . And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth. He was subject to them, and his mother kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men. Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene, in the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John  [the Baptist], the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness. The Uniqueness of Jesus This section is critical to a serious discussion of whether Jesus visited Indian and yet is typically missed by those who fantasize about Jesus visiting India. Jesus made it clear that John the Baptist was the prophet  par excellence  sent by God to prepare the way for Jesus. Here is John’s testimony of Jesus: John 1:29  The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! . . .” Jesus’ primary role in coming to earth was to remove the spiritual consequences of not just Israel’s sin, but the sins of the entire world. The term  Lamb of God  is powerfully significant. All of John’s original hearers knew as emphatically as each knew his/her own name, the connection between a lamb, God and sin. A central aspect of the Jewish Scriptures is that lambs were innocent, undefiled creatures that were sacrificed to God for human sin. Their spiritual purpose was not, of course, to teach but to bridge the abyss between the fearsomely holy God and spiritually defiled humanity. By their own sacrificial death, lambs paid the penalty for human sin, making it possible for humans to commune with the Holy Lord of creation. Jesus, however, was not just  a  lamb but  the  Lamb – the ultimate sacrifice for humanity’s sin. All religious sacrifices were mere symbols; Jesus was the real thing. Here is Jesus’ description of his purpose in coming to earth: Mark 10:45  For the Son of Man also came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. All of humanity had been kidnapped by evil and the only ransom that could secure our release is the death of God’s only Son. To quote Jesus again: John 3:14-18  As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness [Numbers 21:6-9], even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. Just before he was arrested and crucified, Jesus instructed his disciples as to what they should forever focus on when thinking of what he achieved through coming to earth. In the words of the apostle Paul (the gospel accounts are similar): 1 Corinthians 11:23-26  For I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you.  Do this in memory of me .” In the same way he also took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.  Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes .  (Emphasis mine.) Jesus did not come to earth to teach us how to connect with God but to  be  our connection with God. Spiritually, we are drowning in our sin. Jesus came not to teach us how to swim but to dive into the deadly waters and rescue us at the cost of his own life. None of us has what it takes to save ourselves. Jesus insisted that as a branch cut off from a tree would shrivel up and die, so your spiritual survival hinges on having a perpetual union with him as total, intimate and life-giving as a branch’s union with a tree: John 15:4-6  Remain in me, and I in you. As the branch can’t bear fruit by itself, unless it remains in the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. He who remains in me, and I in him, the same bears much fruit, for  apart from me you can do nothing . If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is  thrown out  as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. (Emphasis mine.) Again to quote Jesus: John 10:9-11, 27-30  I am the door. If anyone enters in by me, he will be saved . . . I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . . My sheep . . . follow me. I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. . . . My Father  [God], who has given them to me, is greater than all. No one is able to snatch them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one. John 11:25   . . . I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Matthew 11:27   . . . neither does anyone know the Father  [God], except the Son  [Jesus], and he to whom the Son desires to reveal him. John 5:21-29  For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son  [Jesus]  also gives life to whom he desires. For the Father [God] judges no one, but he has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who doesn’t honor the Son doesn’t honor the Father who sent him. “Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word, and believes him who sent me, has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. Most certainly, I tell you, the hour comes, and now is, when the dead will hear the Son of God’s voice; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, even so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself. He also gave him authority to execute judgment, because he is a son of man. Don’t marvel at this, for the hour comes, in which all that are in the tombs will hear his voice, and will come out; those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. John 6:51-54  I am the living bread which came down out of heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. Yes, the bread which I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. . . . Most certainly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have life in yourselves. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  [Jesus’ followers found this saying so incomprehensible that many left him because of it. Those who stayed with him eventually discovered that Jesus was referring to his sacrificial death, which we must spiritually partake in if we are to have spiritual life.] Peter, fresh from intensive years learning from Jesus and then being divinely endowed both to understand and communicate spiritual truth, summarized Jesus’ ministry this way: Acts 4:12  There is salvation in none other, for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is given among men, by which we must be saved! To quote two other ancient sources: 1 Timothy 2:5-6  For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all; the testimony in its own times. 1 Peter 3:18, 21-22  Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God; being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit . . . which now saves you—not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject to him. 1 John 5:11-12   . . . God gave to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who doesn’t have God’s Son doesn’t have the life. In the words of the Apostle Paul: Colossians 1:15-23  who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things are held together. He is the head of the body, the assembly, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in him; and through him to reconcile all things to himself, by him, whether things on the earth, or things in the heavens, having made peace through the blood of his cross. You, being in past times alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil deeds, yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and without defect and blameless before him, if it is so that you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the Good News which you heard, which is being proclaimed in all creation under heaven; of which I, Paul, was made a servant. There is no spiritual alternative to Jesus. He is not merely a teacher but the world’s only spiritual Savior; humanity’s only hope of connecting with God. Don’t pretend that you can reject that truth without rejecting Jesus. Note his staggering words: John 14:6  Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father  [God], except through me. . . .” Jesus did not come to teach the way to God; he  is  the way. He did not come to reach spiritual truth; he  is  the truth. Neither did he come to show us how to live; if we want spiritual life, he  is  our life.  No one  comes to God except through him. It is highly significant that not only in the above quote but over and over Jesus kept referring to God as Father. You might have many friends and many teachers but you can only have one father. This very term destroys both polytheism (belief in more than one god) and the pantheism (belief that God is impersonal and exists in rocks, plants and so on) that was present in most forms of Indian religion that existed when Jesus lived on this planet. A father gives a child life and might be superior to the child but has a nature that has much in common with his offspring. Rocks don’t father children; fish don’t beget giraffes. If we can think and feel, so can God. Moreover, Jesus emphasized that to be like God a father should not be cold and impersonal but must love and nurture his children and be deeply moved by his children’s needs and requests: Matthew 7:9-11  Or who is there among you, who, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, who will give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! The God that Jesus portrayed was not the God of Indian religions. Moreover, Jesus is not an alternative or add on to any religion; not just a light in a dark world, but light of the entire world (John 8:12); humanity’s one and only hope: 2 John 1:9  Whoever transgresses and doesn’t remain in the teaching of Christ, doesn’t have God. He who remains in the teaching, the same has both the Father and the Son. You can choose to risk eternity and gamble that you do not need Jesus as utterly as he insisted that you do. You can think there are substitutes that will let you survive spiritually. To believe this, however, is to reject Jesus’ teaching and to claim to be more truthful and spiritually enlightened than him. Jesus maintained that the consequences of ignoring him are catastrophic but if he is just another teacher, then what he did and believed, in reference to India or anything else, is of little consequence. Maybe you could even risk other people’s eternity and try to seduce Christians into straying from Jesus and embracing another religion. The Story so Far and Beyond The Gospel accounts are attested as historical records of immense authenticity. They are emphatic that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, taken to Egypt as a child, later settled in Nazareth, had an itinerant ministry in Israel and offered his life as the ultimate in Jerusalem. Each of these geographical movements are not just carefully documented but emphasized as being so much of the divine plan that they were prophesied centuries before they happened . Not only is there no evidence or even a hint in all the New Testament records that Jesus that ever ventured out of Palestine, except for his childhood sojourn in Egypt, all evidence and the thrust of the entire Bible is to the contrary. Furthermore, as will be further confirmed in the next webpage, we find multiple ancient accounts, each showing Jesus’ teaching to be distinctive and unique, and yet thoroughly Jewish and devoid of Indian influence. Every authenticated record of Jesus’ teaching is Jewish to the extreme. But what would have been the point of Jesus travelling what in his era was the enormous distance to India if he had nothing to gain from the journey? And if he did learn anything it would have stood out in his teaching like a giraffe with sore neck. If, in fact, Jesus had been influenced by Indian religions, the removal of all hint of it have had to be an exceedingly deliberate act by many people, it requires intellects beyond that of your average full-time fishermen. Such doctoring would have had to have been highly consistent and extensive because there simply is not a trace of Indian influence in all biblical records of Jesus’ teachings. At first thought, this might not surprise, since Jesus’ apostles were Jewish. However, the slightest hint of Indian influence in Jesus’ original teaching – or in even in his accent – would have stood out like a flashing neon target, seizing every Palestinian Jew’s attention and sending everyone’s tongue into overdrive. Fierce, unrelenting opposition to other religions was central to Jewish beliefs. Consider, for example, the Ten Commandments, the first two of which are: Exodus 20:3-5  You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God . . . A huge proportion of the Jewish Scriptures is filled with warnings about the dire consequences of introducing aspects of other religions into their own and with descriptions of the terrible divine punishments that resulted. Anyone guilty of enticing a Jew to do this incurred the death penalty. Please read the following from the Jewish Scriptures to see just how serious this was: Deuteronomy 13:1-16  If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods” (which you have not known) “and let us serve them”; you shall not listen to the words of that prophet, or to that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you, to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God, fear him, keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and you shall serve him, and cling to him. That prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, shall be put to death, because he has spoken rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, to draw you aside out of the way which the Lord your God commanded you to walk in. So you shall remove the evil from among you. If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend, who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” which you have not known, you, nor your fathers; of the gods of the peoples who are around you, near to you, or far off from you, from the one end of the earth even to the other end of the earth; you shall not consent to him, nor listen to him; neither shall your eye pity him, neither shall you spare, neither shall you conceal him; but you shall surely kill him. Your hand shall be first on him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. You shall stone him to death with stones, because he has sought to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. All Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall not do any more wickedness like this among you. If you shall hear about one of your cities, which the Lord your God gives you to dwell there, that certain base fellows have gone out from among you, and have drawn away the inhabitants of their city, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” which you have not known; then you shall inquire, and make search, and ask diligently. Behold, if it is true, and the thing certain, that such abomination was done among you, you shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, with all that is therein and its livestock, with the edge of the sword. You shall gather all its plunder into the middle of its street, and shall burn with fire the city, and all every bit of its plunder, to the Lord your God. It shall be a heap forever. It shall not be built again. Even if, for some perverse reason, those closest to Jesus were so ashamed of their Lord that they wanted to doctor his teaching, the removal of all Indian influence in the accounts would not have changed what was heard by all the Jewish leaders eager to condemn Jesus and the countless thousands in the crowds listening to his sermons. Anything so foreign to their beliefs would have been indelibly edged into their minds and vigorously gossiped about throughout Judaism. Anyone seeking to counter this would have had to go anywhere by merely ignoring it; he would have gone into serious damage control, trying to put a positive spin on the undeniable facts. Moreover, Jesus’ religious enemies were eager to accuse him of heresy and were continually trying to trap him and yet they could find nothing except Jesus’ own staggering claims about himself (Mark 2:7; Mark 14:61-64) and failed accusations of Jesus not being as fanatically rigid as they were about the lengths one should go to in keeping the Sabbath. And how could all the writers of the New Testament – the one’s Jesus carefully entrusted with the responsibility of recording his message for posterity – consider themselves disciples of Jesus if they were so ashamed of a stand out feature of their Master’s teachings that they not only did not teach it themselves but removed all trace from their accounts of Jesus’ teachings? Isn’t it preposterous that they would willingly suffer extreme flogging (Acts 5:40; 2 Corinthians 12:23-28) and death (Acts 7:59-60) for Jesus if they believed he was so wrong that his teaching contained doctrinal errors? And if Jesus’ faithful followers carefully removed non-Jewish aspects of Jesus’ teaching from their records, what would have been their motivation? All of the synoptic gospels (John’s account was even later) end with Jesus’ commission to preach the message far beyond Jewish borders. With non-Jews quickly proving receptive to the Gospel message, and if there were aspects of non-Jewish beliefs in Jesus’ message, why would so many go to such extremes to try to rip out every trace of them? One of the most radical aspects of early Christianity is that it moved out of the Jewish world to embrace non-Jews of all races. This was a source of considerable controversy at first because Jesus’ initial followers were Jews and they considered they had a special place in God’s heart. At this time when they were seeking to prove that this move to preach the gospel to non-Jews was truly of God, they would have been quick to seize the fact that Jesus went to India as proof that by going to non-Jews they were following in Jesus’ lead. Yet they never mentioned it. There are three more webpages in this series. Each removes still further any possibility of Jesus having any cause to visit India. They show that Jesus rejected some basic tenants of most Indian religions and was not in any way influenced by Indian religion or thinking. The first webpage,  Jesus’ Use of the Jewish Bible , reveals Jesus’ amazingly strong, consistent and exclusive commitment to the Jesus Scriptures as the source of spiritual truth. In stark contrast to most Indian religions, eating meat (including cows) was of great importance to the Jewish Scriptures. The second webpage, Was Jesus a vegetarian? proves that Jesus both approved of eating meat and ate meat himself.    The third webpage, Reincarnation & Jesus, the Bible & Christianity, shows that Jesus did not believe in reincarnation. Next webpage: Jesus’ Use of the Jewish Bible

Jesus’ Reliance on the Old Testament We are about to explore Jesus’ own words to see whether the Jewish Bible was foundational to everything Jesus said and did. This subject is of vital importance to two issues: 1. Is the Bible just a religious book or the uniquely divinely inspired, thoroughly dependable, Word of God? 2. Was Jesus in any way influenced by Indian religion or were his teachings and beliefs founded exclusively on the religion of what Christians call the Old Testament (but what I shall call the Jewish Bible or Jewish Scriptures)? Depending upon which of the above most interests you, to get the most out of this webpage you should have read either: 1. Inspiration & Reliability of the Bible 2. Jesus Visited India? Before plunging in, there’s a matter we need to face. For people like me who are not in any sense Jews, it initially seems weird or even offensive to put any emphasis upon Jews or the revelation they claim God gave them. Doesn’t God care about the rest of humanity? What’s so special about Jews? It turns out that the Jewish Bible records God specifically telling the Jews there is nothing special about them: Deuteronomy 7:7  The Lord didn’t set his love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples. Deuteronomy 9:5-6  Not for your righteousness, or for the uprightness of your heart, do you go in to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God does drive them out from before you, and that he may establish the word which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know therefore, that the Lord your God doesn’t give you this good land to possess for your righteousness; for you are a stiff-necked people. Ezekiel 20:13-14  But the house of Israel rebelled against me in the wilderness: they didn’t walk in my statutes, and they rejected my ordinances, which if a man keep, he shall live in them; and my Sabbaths they greatly profaned. Then I said I would pour out my wrath on them in the wilderness, to consume them. But I worked for my name’s sake, that it should not be profaned in the sight of the nations, in whose sight I brought them out. Ezekiel 36:32  Nor for your sake do I this, says the Lord, be it known to you: be ashamed and confounded for your ways, house of Israel. In fact, it would be quite a task to count all the times the Jewish Bible says that the Jews disappointed and angered God by their stubborn rebelliousness, worshipping other gods, and so on. God Not Impressed With Jews Just a Few Examples Exodus 32:9-14  The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen these people, and behold, they are a stiff-necked people. Now therefore leave me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them, and that I may consume them; and I will make of you a great nation.” Moses begged the Lord his God, and said, “Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, that you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak, saying, ‘He brought them out for evil, to kill them in the mountains, and to consume them from the surface of the earth?’ Turn from your fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of the sky, and all this land that I have spoken of I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” The Lord repented of the evil which he said he would do to his people. 2 Kings 17:14-15  Notwithstanding, they would not listen, but hardened their neck, like the neck of their fathers, who didn’t believe in the Lord their God. They rejected his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies which he testified to them; and they followed vanity, and became vain, and followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. 2 Chronicles 30:8  Now don’t be stiff-necked, as your fathers were; but yield yourselves to the Lord, and enter into his sanctuary, which he has sanctified forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. 2 Chronicles 36:16  but they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the Lord’s wrath arose against his people, until there was no remedy. Nehemiah 9:17,26,29  and refused to obey, neither were they mindful of your wonders that you did among them, but hardened their neck, and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage. . . . Nevertheless they were disobedient, and rebelled against you, and cast your law behind their back, and killed your prophets that testified against them to turn them again to you, and they committed awful blasphemies. . . . and testified against them, that you might bring them again to your law. Yet they dealt proudly, and didn’t listen to your commandments, but sinned against your ordinances, (which if a man does, he shall live in them), turned their backs, stiffened their neck, and would not hear. Psalms 78:8  and might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that didn’t make their hearts loyal, whose spirit was not steadfast with God. Psalms 78:21-22  Therefore the Lord heard, and was angry. A fire was kindled against Jacob, anger also went up against Israel, because they didn’t believe in God, and didn’t trust in his salvation. Jeremiah 7:24  But they didn’t listen nor turn their ear, but walked in their own counsels and in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward. Jeremiah 13:10  This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their heart, and are gone after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this belt, which is profitable for nothing. Jeremiah 35:15  I have sent also to you all my servants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, saying, Return now every man from his evil way, and amend your doings, and don’t go after other gods to serve them, and you shall dwell in the land which I have given to you and to your fathers: but you have not inclined your ear, nor listened to me. Ezekiel 2:4  The children are impudent and stiff-hearted: I am sending you to them . . . Zechariah 7:11-12  But they refused to listen, and turned their backs, and stopped their ears, that they might not hear. Yes, they made their hearts as hard as flint, lest they might hear the law, and the words which the Lord of Armies had sent by his Spirit by the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the Lord of Armies. Nevertheless, the Jewish Scriptures reveal that despite their many serious failings, God singled out the Jews specifically because he loves all peoples and that he chose the Jews as the means whereby God would bless all humanity. The Bible reveals that before earth even existed, God planned to send the eternal Son of God into the world so that all humanity could be saved. In all human history, this special event would happen just once. In order to fulfil his task, he would need to become human and, of necessity, every human has a specific ancestry. In theory, it could have been any race of people that he was born into, but one race had to be selected and for centuries God prepared that race for this great event and he used his revelation to them and the history of his dealings with them to teach the rest of the world about God. The promise was first given to Abraham: Genesis 22:18 All the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring . . . As Abraham’s descendants multiplied, the Lord kept narrowing down which descendants the promise applied to until finally revealing that this uniquely significant person would be a descendant of King David. The Promised Blessing to All Peoples When God chose Abraham, he told him: Genesis 12:3  . . . All the families of the earth will be blessed through you. This promise was later repeated; clearly specifying that it would be through his  offspring  that this blessing to all nations would come: Genesis 22:18  All the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring, because you have obeyed my voice. The promise was further narrowed down to only one of Abraham’s children, Isaac, whom God told: Genesis 26:4  I will multiply your offspring as the stars of the sky, and will give all these lands to your offspring. In your offspring will all the nations of the earth be blessed Again this promise was narrowed down to just one of Abraham’s children, Jacob (Israel), to whom he said: Genesis 28:14  Your offspring will be as the dust of the earth, and you will spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south. In you and in your offspring will all the families of the earth be blessed. It was further narrowed down to descendants of David. In a psalm about the king (i.e. a descendent of David) we read: Psalms 72:17   . . . Men shall be blessed by him. All nations will call him blessed.   Other prophesies confirm that the promised Messiah (Christ) would be a descendant of David: Prophecies in the Jewish Bible of the Messiah being a descendant of David: Isaiah 9:7  Of the increase of his government and of peace there shall be no end, on David’s throne, and on his kingdom, to establish it, and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from that time on, even forever. The zeal of the Lord of Armies will perform this. Isaiah 11:1  A shoot will come out of the stock of Jesse [David’s father], and a branch out of his roots will bear fruit. Jeremiah 23:5  Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will raise to David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. Ezekiel 34:23-24  I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd. I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken it. This was the common understanding of Jews in Jesus’ Day: Luke 1:69-70  and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been from of old) Matthew 22:42  saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “Of David [i.e. descendant of].” And, of course, Jesus was a descendant of David. (In Jesus’ time they often used the expression  son of  to mean  descendent of.  David had, of course, died centuries ago.) Matthew 1:1  The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:20  But when he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take to yourself Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. Matthew 9:27  As Jesus passed by from there, two blind men followed him, calling out and saying, “Have mercy on us, son of David!” Matthew 12:23  All the multitudes were amazed, and said, “Can this be the son of David?” Matthew 15:22  Behold, a Canaanite woman came out from those borders, and cried, saying, “Have mercy on me, Lord, you son of David! My daughter is severely possessed by a demon!” Matthew 20:30  Behold, two blind men sitting by the road, when they heard that Jesus was passing by, cried out, “Lord, have mercy on us, you son of David!” Matthew 20:31  The multitude rebuked them, telling them that they should be quiet, but they cried out even more, “Lord, have mercy on us, you son of David!” Matthew 21:9  The multitudes who went in front of him, and those who followed, kept shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”   The above outline raises another matter that is too complex and would be digressing too far from the purpose of this webpage to address here: What about those who, for such reasons as where or when they lived, die before hearing Jesus’ message? I believe the Bible strongly hints that they do not all face the same eternal fate as those who deliberately reject Jesus. The Bible isn’t big on satisfying idle curiosity, however. It keeps its focus on the practical reality of what you and I who have the privilege of reading the Bible must do now that we know of Jesus. I am willing to take you to the very edge of my understanding of what happens to those who miss out on hearing Jesus’ message, but I need another series of webpages in which to do it. At the end of this current webpage is a link to that series. Now, with introductions out of the way, let’s enter the heart of this webpage. Casual readers will miss many of Jesus’ references to the Jewish Bible. To locate them, one must know that in Jesus’ day these sacred writings were sometimes referred to as Scripture, but a major part was often called the Law or [the writings of] Moses, another major part was called [the writings of] the Prophets, and yet another part was the Psalms. Sometimes Jesus introduced a reference to the Jewish Bible by saying, “It is written . . .” Matthew 4:7  Jesus said to him, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’ ”   Matthew 11:10  For this is he, of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’   Matthew 21:13  He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers!”   Matthew 26:24  The Son of Man goes, even as it is written of him, but woe to that man through whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would be better for that man if he had not been born.”   Matthew 26:31  Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’   Luke 4:4  Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ ”   Luke 4:8  Jesus answered him, “Get behind me Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’ ”   Luke 10:26  He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”   Luke 18:31  He took the twelve aside, and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be completed.   Luke 20:17  But he looked at them, and said, “Then what is this that is written, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the chief cornerstone?’   Luke 21:22  For these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.   Luke 22:37  For I tell you that this which is written must still be fulfilled in me: ‘He was counted with transgressors.’ For that which concerns me has an end.”   Luke 24:44  He said to them, “This is what I told you, while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me must be fulfilled.”   Luke 24:46  He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day   John 6:45  It is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’’ . . .   John 8:17  It’s also written in your law that the testimony of two people is valid.   John 10:34  Jesus answered them, “Isn’t it written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?’   John 15:25  But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’   At times, however, one simply has to be highly familiar with the Jewish Scriptures to recognize a Bible quote or an allusion to one. Some Bible publishers make it easier by inserting into the text (sometimes via a footnote) the location in the Jewish Bible of the text that Jesus is referring to. Here are some of the people from the Jewish Scriptures that Jesus specifically referred to by name, treating them all as historical figures who have much to teach us about God: Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Noah, David, Solomon, Queen of Sheba, Elijah, the widow in Zarephath, Elisha, Naaman, Isaiah, Jonah and Zechariah. He referred to no Indian, (nor anyone from my own ancestry). The Jewish Bible did not merely influence Jesus’ teaching, however, nor did he just keep referring to it, he frequently quoted it. The following quotes might seem short but everything in the Gospels had to be brief because books – the raw materials and reproduction (meticulous copying by hand) – were extremely expensive. What is significant is that the quotes come from diverse parts of the Jewish Scriptures. Sometimes Jesus even rolled into one statement a compilation of quotes from different parts of the Jewish Scriptures, thus indicating that he was so devoted to it that he had memorized much of it – perhaps all of it. Matthew 9:13  But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ . . .   Matthew 10:35-36  For I came to set a man at odds against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s foes will be those of his own household. [Micah 7:6]   Matthew 11:10  For this is he, of whom it is written, ‘Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you.’   Matthew 12:5, 7  Or have you not read in the law, that on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless? . . . But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.   Matthew 13:14-15  In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, ‘By hearing you will hear, and will in no way understand; Seeing you will see, and will in no way perceive: for this people’s heart has grown callous, their ears are dull of hearing, they have closed their eyes; or else perhaps they might perceive with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and would turn again; and I would heal them.’   Matthew 15:4  For God commanded, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him be put to death.’   Matthew 15:7-9  You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, ‘These people draw near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. And in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrine rules made by men.’ .”   Matthew 19:17-19  He said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “‘You shall not murder.’ ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ‘You shall not steal.’ ‘You shall not offer false testimony.’ ‘Honor your father and mother.’ And, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ”   Matthew 21:13  He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ . . .”   Matthew 22:36-37  “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ . .”   Matthew 22:43-44  He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?’   Matthew 23:39  For I tell you, you will not see me from now on, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ” [Psalm 118:26]   Matthew 26:31  Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’   Mark 12:10-11  Haven’t you even read this Scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner. This was from the Lord, it is marvellous in our eyes’?   Luke 4:4  Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.’ ”   Luke 4:8  Jesus answered him, “Get behind me Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’ ”   Luke 4:12  Jesus answering, said to him, “It has been said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’ ”   Luke 11:49  Therefore also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles; and some of them they will kill and persecute.   Luke 20:37-40  But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ . . . Some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you speak well.” They didn’t dare to ask him any more questions.   Luke 22:36-37  Then he said to them, “ . . . which is written must still be fulfilled in me: ‘He was counted with transgressors.’ . . .”   John 6:45  It is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Therefore everyone who hears from the Father, and has learned, comes to me.   John 7:38  He who believes in me, as the Scripture has said, from within him will flow rivers of living water.   John 10:34  Jesus answered them, “Isn’t it written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?’   John 15:25  But this happened so that the word may be fulfilled which was written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’   Examples of Jesus showing significant understanding of the Jewish Bible without specifically quoting it: Luke 2:46-47  [When Jesus was only twelve] After three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the middle of the teachers . . . All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. Luke 11:53-54  As he said these things to them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to be terribly angry, and to draw many things out of him; lying in wait for him, and seeking to catch him in something he might say, that they might accuse him. John 7:23  If a boy receives circumcision on the Sabbath, that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me, because I made a man completely healthy on the Sabbath? John 8:17  It’s also written in your law that the testimony of two people is valid. Jesus saw the Jewish Bible as so central to his earthly mission that he kept affirming over and over that minute details about him, and key events affecting his stay on earth, were prophesied in the Jewish Bible. Moreover, despite Jesus citing so many Jewish Scriptures as prophesying significant events in his life, the Gospel writers, in their comments, provide many additional ones. It seems likely that one reason for the Gospel writers doing this is that they were sharing what Jesus revealed to his disciples during these two events after his resurrection from the dead: 1. Jesus speaking to two of his followers as they walked to Emmaus   Luke 24:25-27  He said to them, “Foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Didn’t the Christ have to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” Beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he explained to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.   2. Jesus, addressing the apostles and others who had gathered in Jerusalem:   Luke 24:44-45  He said to them, “This is what I told you, while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds, that they might understand the Scriptures.   Like many other people, I have found still more examples of Jewish Scriptures pointing to Jesus (a link at the end of this webpage cites some of them). Finding these is simply a manifestation of Jesus’ promise that when he left earth he would send the Holy Spirit into the hearts of believers:   John 16:13-14  However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth . . . He will glorify me, for he will take from what is mine, and will declare it to you.   Here’s an indication of how much Jesus saw the Jewish Bible as being hand in glove with his own life and ministry:   John 5:39-40, 45-46  You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about me. Yet you will not come to me, that you may have life.  . . . Don’t think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, even Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed [the sacred writings of] Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me.   Besides Jesus seeing himself and events impacting his life as fulfilling the prophecies of the Jewish Bible, he saw himself as belonging to a long line of  Jewish  prophets. For example, he implied that true prophets die in Jerusalem like he did:   Luke 13:33-34   . . . for it can’t be that a prophet perish outside of Jerusalem.’ “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets, and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, like a hen gathers her own brood under her wings, and you refused!   Such statements seem to exclude the possibility of Jesus seeing anyone from other races who preceded him as being true messengers from God. Jesus saw himself as the culmination of that line of Jewish prophets. For instance, in Mark 12 he told a parable in which he likened Jewish prophets to servants, each of whom was martyred. Finally, the owner of the vineyard (representing God) “still having one” – not a mere servant, but his very “beloved son” (representing Jesus).   The New Testament book of Hebrews crystallizes this with these words:   Hebrews 1:1-2  God, having in the past spoken to the fathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, has at the end of these days spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds.     Most people underrate the full extent to which all of Jesus’ teaching were founded on and saturated with the Jewish Scriptures. Even aspects of Jesus’ message that are commonly thought to be departures from the Jewish Bible were actually taught there.   For instance, Jesus referred to God as being a father. Many people suppose that such an intimate view of God was a departure from Old Testament teaching. In reality, the Jewish Scriptures are filled with even more references to a tender, childlike attitude toward Almighty God than the New Testament, and their many descriptions of God’s tenderness are even more moving.   Yet another example of people thinking Jesus’ was teaching something new, when he was actually expounding Old Testament revelation, is what he said about loving one’s enemies: Proverbs 25:21  If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat. If he is thirsty, give him water to drink. When, for instance, Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan, he was specifically explaining what the Jewish Bible means by loving your neighbor. When Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you . . .” (Matthew 5:43-44), he was not correcting the Jewish Scriptures (there is no such Scripture). He was citing a non-biblical saying that was contrary to a correct understanding of the Jewish Bible. As he said in the same sermon:   Matthew 7:12  Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets.  [i.e. the entire Old Testament]. (Emphasis mine.) Yet another example of Jesus seeming to be acting contrary to the Jewish Bible is regarding the Sabbath. A closer look, however, reveals that Jesus kept emphasizing that his treatment of the Sabbath was in accordance with Jewish Scripture. A very different type of example is when Jesus said: Matthew 5:38-41  You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you, don’t resist him who is evil; but whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. If anyone sues you to take away your coat, let him have your cloak also. Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. This does indeed initially read like a contradiction, but Jesus saw much of the Jewish Scriptures as detailing not how we should treat others (which, as emphasized in other parts of the Jewish Bible, is by love and mercy) but establishing laws for a nation of hard-hearted people. This is seen most clearly in Jesus’ teaching about divorce where he quoted the Jewish Scriptures to prove his argument against divorce and then added: Matthew 19:8   . . . Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it has not been so  [which he proved by quoting the biblical account of creation]. (Emphasis mine.) What nation on earth could keep from descending into chaos if thieves, thugs, wife-beaters and the like could do whatever they wanted without fear of being brought to justice? Our heart attitude toward those who personally hurt us, however, is an entirely different matter. It was not that Jesus and Moses were contradicting each other; it was that they were addressing quite different issues. Whereas Moses’ mission was more political – to reveal laws for a nation – Christ’s mission was to highlight God’s holy standards for individuals. Jesus opposed the religious leaders of the day, only because they were straying from the religion of the Jewish Bible: Matthew 15:6   . . . You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition. Matthew 23:2-3  saying, “The scribes and the Pharisees sat on Moses’ seat [i.e. they teach Scripture]. All things therefore whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do, but don’t do their works; for they say, and don’t do. Matthew 23:23  Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. But you ought to have done these,  and not to have left the other undone . Mark 7:5-8  The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why don’t your disciples walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat their bread with unwashed hands?” He answered them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. But they worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ “ For you set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men . . . .” (Emphasis mine.) Jesus regarded the Scriptures as so powerful that if people refused to respond to them they would not even respond to God if the truth were confirmed by the ultimate miracle: someone rising from the dead. He cited this conversation between a man suffering in hell, who saw Lazarus and Abraham in heaven: Luke 16:27-31   . . . I ask you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house; for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, so they won’t also come into this place of torment.’ “But Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’ “He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ “He said to him, ‘If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rises from the dead.’ ” It is hard for us in the modern era to grasp how prohibitively expensive books were in Jesus’ day. The exorbitant cost meant that, of financial necessity, documents had to be kept as brief as possible. To Jesus’ followers, the preservation of every unique word falling from Jesus’ lips and every detail of his life is priceless and yet so much had to be pruned out. This renders astonishing the amount of space devoted to quoting already existing, widely known documents (the Jewish Bible). It highlights just how central the Scriptures were to Jesus’ life and message. Even when producing bare summaries, writers could not quote him for long without being forced to include quotes from Scripture. They were so much at the heart of Jesus’ preaching and discussions that it was impossible to edit them out and the summary still make sense. Jesus regarded the Jewish Scriptures in a way that staggers even many Christians. For a glimpse, consider how Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24 (part of the Jewish Scriptures): Matthew 19:4-6 He answered, “Haven’t you read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall join to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh?’ So that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, don’t let man tear apart.” “He who made them . . . said . . .” affirmed Jesus, but the Jewish Scripture does not introduce the verse Jesus quoted with anything remotely like, “God said.” There are, of course, a vast number of instances when the Bible claims to be quoting God directly. Just a little earlier in the account, for instance, we read, “The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him.” (Genesis 2:18). This is not such an instance, however. This statement reads like a comment by the human author. And yet in quoting this passage, Jesus said these were the very words of the Creator. We see something similar in Matthew 22:43 (NIV) where Jesus quotes a Bible Psalm, saying “David, speaking by the Spirit . . .” He said to them, “How is it then that David, speaking by the Spirit, calls him ‘Lord’?  . . .” Jesus treated the words of Scripture as having at the same time both a human author  and  a divine author, so that it was equally true to quote Scripture and say “Moses (or David and so on) said . . .” and to say “God said . . .” So, since Jesus said, “I and [God] the Father are one,” (John 10:30), he was claiming that he and the author of the Jewish Scriptures are one. Jesus’ teaching is so saturated with the Jewish Scriptures that some non-Christian Jews criticize him for being unoriginal. In reality, if Jesus’ teaching stood out as being different from Old Testament revelation, something would be terribly wrong, since a key aspect of his teaching is that he is the prophesied Jewish Messiah and that he is the culmination of a long line of Jewish messengers from God and the fulfilment of the Jewish Bible. Nevertheless, Jesus did not just cling to the Jewish Bible as the authoritative source of spiritual truth from which to instruct his followers and expose the errors of those who thought him mistaken; he relied on it privately as his personal weapon for fighting temptation and spiritual deception. We see this vividly when he was alone, being subjected to the Tempter’s concerted efforts to deceive and seduce him. Jesus’ response to each of the three temptations he faced, was to quote Scripture: Matthew 4:4-10  But he answered, “ It is written , ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ” . . .Jesus said to him, “ Again, it is written , ‘You shall not test the Lord, your God.’ ” . . .Then Jesus said to him, “Get behind me, Satan!  For it is written , ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and you shall serve him only.’ ” The second temptation was especially insightful. The evil genius was so aware of Jesus’ dependence upon Scripture that the devil tried to turn the Bible against Jesus by hoping to use it to dupe him: Matthew 4:6  “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for  it is written , ‘He will put his angels in charge of you.’ and, ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you don’t dash your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus had no Plan B. Rather than lessen his total reliance on the Bible for his spiritual protection, his response was to cite it yet again to expose the devil’s deceitful misuse of it. Toward a Conclusion Wherever we look in Jesus’ life and message we keep finding his profound reverence for the Jewish Bible. In a prayer to God, his Father, Jesus said, “. . . Your word is truth” (John 17:17). Another time, he said “. . . Scripture can’t be broken” (John 10:35). When under pressure to compromise, he said, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God’ ” (Matthew 4:4). One of his greatest criticisms of people was, “ . . . You have made the commandment of God void because of your tradition” (Matthew 15:6). Not surprisingly, he said such things as “My mother and my brothers are these who hear the word of God, and do it.” (Luke 8:21. See also Luke 11:28). He proclaimed: Luke 16:17  But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tiny stroke of a pen in the law to fall. On yet another occasion he said: Matthew 5:17-18  Don’t think that I came to destroy the law or the prophets. I didn’t come to destroy, but to fulfill. For most certainly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter or one tiny pen stroke shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished. The more you delve into Jesus’ teaching and into the Jewish Bible the more you will discover how thoroughly Jesus’ teaching was based on the Jewish Bible. No wonder some Jewish critics accuse Jesus of being unoriginal! He taught that after death everyone is judged by God, as a result of which some will spend the rest of eternity in the torment of hell, whereas others will live forever in glorified bodies. Some Jews who disagreed with this teaching approached Jesus. He told them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). Jesus was addressing people highly familiar with the Jewish Scriptures and yet he still insisted they did not know these Scriptures well enough to avoid falling into error. This yet again demonstrates how foundational to all spiritual revelation Jesus regarded the Jewish Scriptures (compare 2 Timothy 3:15-17). We, too, will fall into error if we do not thoroughly know the Jewish Scriptures. This is not only true spiritually; there are obvious practical reasons why anyone failing to grasp how central these Scriptures are to Jesus’ teachings will repeatedly misunderstand him. We cannot be sure of understanding anyone without thoroughly knowing that person’s language and culture and the things that are critically important to him. For just one of a multitude of examples from Jesus’ sayings, consider how he often spoke of godly people as being sheep. He would not have done so if he were in a western Twenty-First Century megacity whose inhabitants usually think it an insult to be called sheep. Likewise, he would have been misunderstood in ancient Egypt, where shepherds were despised (Genesis 46:34). To understand Jesus’ meaning we must understand that Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries saw sheep as individuals and lovable and so precious that a shepherd would risk his life for one. What makes a deep understanding of the Jewish Bible so critical is not only the unique role Jesus assigns to it as the prime source of spiritual truth, but there is a real sense in which the Jewish Bible is the theological dictionary containing all the definitions of the words Jesus used. This conclusion is inescapable, given how highly Jesus not only favored the Jewish Scriptures but revered them as the very word of God, and the overwhelming proportion of times Jesus quoted or otherwise alluded to the Jewish Scriptures in his teaching. Like a laser, Jesus cut through the spiritual views of his contemporaries. He kept correcting religious authorities; rebuking them for straying from the truth of the Bible, but not once did he attempt to “correct” Scripture. For him, the Jewish Bible was rock solid truth; the spiritual standard by which everything else must be measured. Moreover, he kept insisting that these Scriptures speak of him. So if we are to understand Jesus and his message we must view him not through the lens of our own religious background but through the lens of the Jewish Scriptures; the spiritual authority he kept measuring everything by; the sacred writings that he revered as prophetically setting out his earthly mission. Even more astonishing is that Jesus used these Scriptures to set the course for his own life. Being both sinless perfection and the eternal Son of God, Jesus was completely different from the rest of humanity. We can expect to need spiritual props that he could do without. Nevertheless, just as Jesus not only urged others to pray but relied heavily upon it to maintain his own spiritual well-being, so it was with his reliance upon Scripture. The way Jesus reverenced the Bible boggles the mind, but to reject this attitude to Scripture is to claim to know God better than the world’s greatest Teacher and to pronounce Jesus Christ a deluded fool. Hopefully, I am not so vain as to consider myself a greater spiritual authority than Jesus. My goal is to have Jesus’ attitude to the accuracy and supreme authority of the Bible and to use it to better understand his heart and his meaning. Related Pages What about those who Die without Hearing of Jesus? A Fresh Look at Messianic Prophecies The Inspiration and Reliability of the Bible

The Blessing of our amazing Lord be upon you! So many webpages are up and we are very much seeing God’s grace. Grantley has been unwell and yet God has sent a beautiful soul to help us with the website. Please enjoy and be blessed as I have by Grantley’s writings. He checks his emails as he can. Your Sister Vicki Morris

Bible uniquely inspired? Bible the Word of God? Bible divinely inspired? Bible infallible? Bible God-breathed? Divine inspiration of the Bible. Verbal inspiration of the Bible. Bible inspired by God? Verbal Plenary Inspiration. Deep experience with God and the Bible has led Christians to conclude that the Bible is so unique that there is no word in the English language to describe how this amazing book was written. When believers say the Bible is inspired by God, they have to endow the word inspired with a whole new meaning, way beyond how the word is used in any other context. A life coach might inspire (i.e. motivate) a person to achieve something extraordinary but that use of the word is utterly inadequate when it comes to describing the writing of the Bible. Theologians have had to invent that rather clumsy expression, verbal plenary inspiration to mean that the penning of every word of Scripture was carefully guided by God. On the other hand, few Bible scholars believe that God so took over the writers that they became no more than dictating machines. Especially in the original language, one can see the distinct writing style of each human writer. Nevertheless, the belief is that God partnered with them in a unique way so that the final result was truly of God. Like many Christian writers, I look to God to guide every word I write, but Christian writers see the Bible as being on an entirely different level of spiritual authority, dependability and durability. Is the Bible truly inspired by God in this unique sense? Can we stake not just our lives but our eternities on the Bible? You can become a Christian without believing the Bible is the infallible Word of God nor even believing it is uniquely inspired. It greatly affects one’s spiritual development, however, to be forever wondering which parts of the Bible can be trusted. So let’s start with the foundation of each Christian’s faith: Jesus. Let’s just simply look to him as our spiritual leader and see how he regarded the Old Testament. Did he, for example, correct this significant part of Scripture or find errors in it? Did he set himself up as a new spiritual authority who supersedes Scripture? Did he exalt and reverence it? Such questions are carefully explored in a webpage that I will introduce to you. afterward we can explore deeper into the inspiration and reliability of the rest of the Bible but this is the logical starting point. Unless you prefer me to take you on a meaningless fantasy trip, I am forced to keep citing the most ancient, most attested and most historically accurate documents we have about Jesus. There are several criteria one must consider: * How soon after Jesus’ death the document was written * The time gap between the writing of the account and the earliest surviving manuscripts * The number of surviving ancient manuscripts * The degree of agreement among the ancient manuscripts * The extent to which geographical, cultural and historical details in the account agree with facts known from other sources * The reliance upon eyewitnesses and careful investigation of the facts (a rarity in ancient times) The documents that stand head and shoulders above any other contenders happen to be the ancient library now known as the New Testament. For an example of the care taken, see Luke 1:1-4 For confirmation that these documents are without rival, see F. F. Bruce The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Sixth Edition, 1981, Eerdmans). To avoid giving an inflated impression of how frequently Jesus did or said various things, I almost always omit citing additional accounts of the same event in other Gospels. Although in authenticity and dependability, no other source of information about Jesus remotely approaches the diverse writings that now form the New Testament, people feel uncomfortable about relying on these records. The nagging concern is whether all this detailed documentation of Jesus’ life and teaching was somehow doctored. It is not feasible to suppose such doctoring of multiple accounts (all of which we now know were completed close in time to the events they record and accurately preserved since then). But here’s the clincher: who could think of themselves as believers and faithful followers of Jesus – as the writers of these accounts clearly considered themselves to be – while being so ashamed of Jesus as to deliberately mutilate accounts of his teaching? More disturbing still: it is an insult to God himself for anyone to suppose that these ancient accounts of Jesus’ ministry might have prejudicially removed reference to key aspects of Jesus’ life and teaching. What makes this such an insult is that Jesus, after considerable prayer, handpicked the twelve apostles to personally train as the custodians of his message and the ones who would “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation” If Jesus’ staggering claims are true, such as “No one comes to [God] the Father except through me” (John 14:6), for the record of his message to have been lost or distorted for subsequent generations would be a tragedy beyond belief. Moreover, Jesus declared, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Mark 13:31). Since Jesus opted not to leave behind any of his own writings, no responsibility other than Jesus’ own was as critical as that of those he chose to transmit his message to subsequent generations. There is even a sense in which their role was greater than Jesus’ because if they failed it would have rendered Jesus’ life and death a waste. If Jesus got this wrong he is not the eternal Son of God but a fallible human who could neither foresee nor influence the future. This would make him unworthy to be followed as a spiritual leader, much less worshipped. In reality, Jesus always knew exactly what he was doing. He knew, for example, that Judas would betray him and that Peter and the other disciples would deny him but afterward be faithful. To zero in on the bare facts of Jesus’ teaching and shun Christian interpretation or bias, I will primarily cite the actual recorded words of Jesus and mostly side-step mentioning comments in the Gospels make by the authors. I will also largely avoid mentioning other significant early Christian writings (the rest of the Christian Bible). This voluntary restriction is despite the fact that besides the Gospels themselves, these are the writings of people who were more familiar with Jesus’ life and message than anyone else from whom we can gain information and the ones to whom Jesus entrusted the transmission of his message. The Unique Value of the Apostle Paul’s Writings to Understanding Jesus As a highly intelligent and well informed Jewish scholar authorized by the Jewish hierarchy to stamp out Christianity, Paul had full access to all the dirt on Jesus (if any existed) and all the arguments against the Christian interpretation of Jesus’ life and message. What makes this particularly relevant is that any perceived influence on Jesus by a foreign religion would have been seen as scandalous by orthodox Jews. It would have so infuriated them as to have dominated their whole attack on Christianity. The first of the Ten Commandment is “You shall have no other gods before me,” and the second is “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God . . .” (Exodus 20:2-5). Although the Apostle Paul was not a disciple of Jesus while Jesus was living, Paul’s message was fully approved by Peter and the other disciples: Galatians 2:1,2,6-9 Fourteen years later I went up again to Jerusalem, this time with Barnabas. I took Titus along also. I went in response to a revelation and set before them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. . . . As for those who seemed to be important – whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance – those men added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles. James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the Jews. Acts 9:26-28 When he [Paul, also known as Saul] came to Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he really was a disciple. But Barnabas took him and brought him to the apostles. He told them how Saul on his journey had seen the Lord and that the Lord had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had preached fearlessly in the name of Jesus. So Saul stayed with them and moved about freely in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. Acts 15:2,4,7,12,13,22,25,26  . . . Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question. . . . When they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church and the apostles and elders, to whom they reported everything God had done through them. . . . After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them . . . The whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the miraculous signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them. When they finished, James spoke up . . . Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. . . .   we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul – men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Peter 3:15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. Although I have primarily limited myself to the words of Jesus himself, it turns out that there are no obvious contradictions between his actual words and the Jewish Scriptures and the rest of the New Testament. Related Pages Spiritual Essentials for Accurate Bible Interpretation

The Spiritual Essentials For Accurate Bible Interpretation Beyond Academic Methods (Hermeneutics)   Why Christians Disagree in Doctrine and Biblical Understanding   Down-to-Earth Help   In   How to Understand the Bible   How to Rightly Divide the Word of Truth   For spiritual truth, we need the Bible, but to understand the Bible, the same God who inspired its writers must inspire its readers.   This webpage searches the Scriptures to identify and learn how to remove personal blockages to divine revelation, lest we fall into error.   Why can good Christians study the same Bible passages, be certain that they have found God’s truth and yet end up with contradictory beliefs about what God means? The scary truth is that these disagreements exist even when full-on, Spirit-filled Christians or highly skilled Bible scholars and theologians interpret Scripture. We all believe we are “rightly dividing the word of truth” but, disturbingly, our contradictory interpretations prove that probably all of us are at least sometimes in error. Our errors might not be so grave as to threaten our salvation, but isn’t the God we serve a God of Truth? Any error is likely to have undesirable effects.   My prayer is that this webpage be simple but profound. Because this exciting subject is vital to all Christians I avoid theological jargon. I confess an ulterior motive, however, in making one exception. I will introduce one word – hermeneutics – that will be new to many readers, though well known to pastors, theologians and seminary or Bible college students. When seeking a webpage like this one, such people will most likely type “hermeneutics” into search engines. So mentioning it a few times here will help us find each other. The majority of us who use more down-to-earth language are equally important to me and, of course, to God. Hermeneutics focuses on intellectual helps to accurate Bible interpretation – considering the context, understanding the era in which it was written, and so on.   I’m a firm believer in good hermeneutics. I have even written a small book on the subject. As you drift through this webpage, however, you will become increasingly certain that as important as hermeneutics is, the Bible teaches that the key factors in correctly interpreting the Bible are spiritual, not intellectual.   One might argue that the hermeneutics commonly taught in theological institutions is  rational  hermeneutics – principles of Bible interpretation that both Christians and non-Christians can profitably use. This is no criticism: God is not irrational. He created us with intellects, and the most important of his commands is that we love him with everything within us, including our minds. An exclusively intellectual approach to the Bible, however, is incomplete, because in the words of Jesus:   John 4:24   God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit  . . . Matthew 13:11  . . . To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it is not given to them. Matthew 16:23   . . . You are a stumbling block to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of men. John 8:43-44   Why don’t you understand my speech? Because you can’t hear my word. You are of your father, the devil  . . . And in the words of Paul: Romans 8:7   . . . the mind of the flesh is hostile toward God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be. 1 Corinthians 2:12-14   But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us by God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things. Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit . . . he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned. So as important as rational hermeneutics is, the focus of this page is what might be called  spiritual  hermeneutics – discerning spiritual truth in the Bible by means that only Christians can access and/or understand. If that statement trips alarm bells within you, I’m not surprised. It sounds flaky and yet we’ll discover that this is repeatedly emphasized in Scripture – the book that claims supernatural origins. We’ll also discover that this is not a cue for flaky claims and unsubstantiated speculation. Instead, it is a sobering call for God-fearing, yet joyous, dependence upon humanity’s Creator and Judge for revelation and understanding. We all know that “ the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving ” ( 2 Corinthians 4:4 ) . It’s not that they lack intelligence, nor even that they lack knowledge. Unbelievers are subject to insidious spiritual interference that keeps them blinded to truth that would have set them free. But does becoming a believer mean the end of all such attacks? Do we instantly have 20/20 vision concerning every spiritual truth in the universe? No more than the first step takes an adventurer to the summit of Mount Everest. It was for Spirit-filled believers that Paul prayed: Ephesians 1:17-18   t hat the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints  . . . These were the very people whom Paul said were already enthroned with Christ  (Ephesians 2:6 ) and have been “ blessed . . . with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ ” ( Ephesians 1:3 ). Yet despite their spiritual status and divine insight, Paul knew that as Christians they needed still more revelation. Moreover – and this might astound some of us – he knew that neither his letters, nor rigorous study was enough to give them the revelation they needed. He knew that a critical factor in them receiving spiritual understanding was nothing less than repeated prayer for revelation. While all the theologians were oblivious to their Messiah’s birth, sheep minders received a divine invitation to worship baby Jesus. Heaven’s databanks are crammed with such stories. Jesus rejoiced in the Almighty hiding his secrets from those who are wise [in their own eyes and/or in the eyes of the world]. Instead of revealing his spiritual truths to the theologically skilled, the Lord of lords chose the ultimate insult to those who pride themselves in their intellect by revealing these liberating spiritual secrets to the unschooled. Like it or not, God is God. He determines what he reveals and to whom. Matthew 11:25  At that time, Jesus answered, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you hid these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to infants .  . . .” The “wise and learned” that Jesus spoke of were not secular humanists but people whose whole lives revolved around God and the reverent and meticulous study of his Word. They were the Bible scholars, theologians and highly esteemed preachers of his day who had become so intoxicated by their own cleverness and devotion that God kept them blind, deliberately bypassing them and revealing his spiritual secrets to simple people. Here is a key Scripture: John 9:39-41   Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, that those who don’t see may see; and that those who see may become blind.” Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains . . . .” The Pharisees’ significant Bible knowledge and theological skills – which should have been an immense help – proved counterproductive. It’s said a little knowledge is dangerous, but the frightening reality is that more knowledge is even more dangerous because it increases the likelihood of being blinded by pride and becoming unteachable. James hints at this: James 1:22   But be doers of the word, and not only hearers, deluding your own selves .  Of course, Bible study is of immense value, but the more emphasis one places on studying Scripture rather than living it, the more deceived one is likely to be. There are those for whom the Bible is an instruction manual and there are those for whom it is fascinating literature. The Bible is a love letter that moves some to fall ever deeper in love with the author. Others just love the letter. “ Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach, ” is a terrifying possibility. No wonder James wrote: James 3:1   Let not many of you be teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive heavier judgment. The Bible is a map used to great effect by spiritual adventurers and used to no effect by armchair “heroes” who never venture out of their door spiritually, yet pride themselves in their map reading. Every sport has its champions and it has its fans who pride themselves in their amazing knowledge of the game. Which do you want to be in the game of life? Consider someone whose Bible knowledge is appalling and yet with the little he knows he achieves far more in God than a seminary professor. Which of them does God regard as ignorant? The key, of course, is not to study the Bible less, but to live it more. Psalm 119:11  I have hidden your word in my heart  . . . Why? To gain knowledge? No. The psalmist continues:  . . . that I might not sin against you. His goal was not to win a game of Bible Trivia. His Bible study goal was to learn how to avoid displeasing God. “. . .   Don’t let me wander from your commandments ” he prayed ( Psalm 119:10 ). Again we read: Joshua 1:8   This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. Why?  . . . that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for  then  you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. (Emphasis mine) Joshua was divinely commanded to pour over the Scriptures not so that he would fill with knowledge but in order to live Scripture. Yet again we read: Deuteronomy 29:29   The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever  . . . Why?  . . . that we may do all the words of this law. In Jesus’ parable of the man who built his life on the sand and the one who built on the rock, both men knew Jesus’ teaching ( Matthew 7:24-27 ). They differed not in spiritual knowledge. It was what they did with that knowledge that gave them such different destinies. It is a spiritual principle that the person who is faithful in little will be given much (compare  Matthew 24:46-47; 25:21 ). Those who have not got around to putting into practice the biblical truths they already know are unlikely to inspire God to reveal still more truth to them. Further revelation would only make them even more accountable; exposing them to still more judgment. We quoted Jesus telling the Pharisees, “ If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains . . . .” There would have been great hope for them if only they had had the humility to recognize how little their understanding was. Every Christian knows that although God longs to forgive all sin, for our Savior to do so, we must first admit our sin. Likewise, God longs to open our eyes to spiritual truth but we must first admit our blindness. A kindly optician might be eager to correct our eyesight for free, but his hands are tied if we refuse to admit that we need his help or are too proud to wear glasses. Admitting one’s spiritual blindness is rare and difficult for someone with great Bible skills. The Bible isn’t the problem, of course. It’s one’s attitude. It is so hard for a person rich in spiritual knowledge to advance further in the kingdom of God because it is so hard for such a person to recognize how little he really knows and how desperate his need for divine intervention in his understanding of the Bible. 1 Corinthians 8:2   But if anyone thinks that he knows anything, he doesn’t yet know as he ought to know. The same is true of having lofty moral standards and great devotion. It was to highly moral people that Jesus said, “ the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering into God’s Kingdom before you ” ( Matthew 21:31 ). We dare not slacken in our devotion to God and the study of his Word. If, however, we begin to think the key to spiritual insight is our efforts rather than God’s grace, we are in grave danger of spiritual blindness. It then becomes the equivalent of the hare and the tortoise, with those of little Bible knowledge spiritually overtaking their theological betters. We must model ourselves on the writer of Psalm 119. His knowledge of the Word of God and devotion to it was immense and yet he maintained the humility to keep praying for still greater understanding and pleading with God not to hide from him the true meaning of the Scriptures that everyone thought this man knew inside out. Here is a man after God’s heart; a man who didn’t let his vast store of spiritual knowledge sabotage his spiritual progress. Though so in tune with God that he was in the very act of writing Scripture, the psalmist prayed, “ Don’t hide your commandments from me ” ( Psalm 119:19 ). If the Almighty chooses to keep a truth hidden from someone, the greatest intellect or best hermeneutics in the world won’t help. And anyone who thinks he or she is beyond falling into deception is already deceived. As critical as one’s intellectual approach is, it fades in significance relative to the multitude of spiritual factors influencing Bible interpretation.   To distill a profound truth into a few words:   When seeking spiritual truth, the Bible is God’s lens. We can’t see clearly without it. But God is the light. Without him we can see nothing.   I am not quite deluded enough (but I’m sure the devil is working on it) to consider myself less prone to error than other devoted Christians. My prayer is simply that, together, we discover all the reasons why we Christians come to contradictory conclusions (thus proving that at least some of us are wrong) when we sincerely seek truth from the same Bible. Obviously, the goal of this webpage is to learn how to lower our susceptibility to spiritual error. Nothing could be more important, and yet it seems a neglected subject.   The Limits of the Mind   I do not imagine that all Christian academic institutions have fallen for it, but the temptation hovers over them to focus on training the mind and underplay the fact that correct Bible interpretation is an activity as spiritual as prayer or receiving divine guidance. Any attempt to reduce Bible interpretation to an academic exercise is destined to fail.   Hermeneutics has optimistically been defined as the  science  of Bible interpretation. One of the core elements of science, however, is that when an experiment or observation is repeated by different personnel, the same results are obtained. This doesn’t happen with the Bible, because genuine Bible interpretation is not cold science but hinges on an interpersonal relationship between two complex beings – ourselves and God.   With behavioral science (psychology research) filling my early adult years, and general science continuing to fascinate me, I am quite a fan of science. In the context of Bible interpretation, however, the very word “science” should set off alarm bells, alerting us to the fact that it is an attempt to impose modern western thinking on a spiritual exercise that God entrusted to humanity long before western science came into existence. Though times are changing, we still live in an era in which multitudes are besotted with the power of the human mind, rather than spiritual matters. And Christians are not immune to this pervasive and potentially corrupting distraction.   1 Corinthians 3:18-19   Let no one deceive himself. If anyone thinks that he is wise among you in this world, let him become a fool, that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He has taken the wise in their craftiness.” Accurate Bible interpretation is not found like a dead flower pressed between the covers of a Bible. Correct Bible interpretation is found through a living relationship – heart to heart communion – with the Author. Biblical truth is discovered by getting to know a person, because Truth is a person – the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m all for study but it is important that we don’t let an intellectual approach to the Bible reduce to sterile study what should be the pinnacle of holy intimacy. That would be like trying to reduce romance to chemical equations. Correctly interpreting Scripture is as intimate as feeling a loved one’s breath on your cheek as he shares his deepest secrets. Though it infuriates those who pride themselves in their intellect, the Bible is God’s Word and he decides who will understand what he means. Since God is love, what he treasures is not people’s intellectual power or even studiousness but their intimacy with him. So he is moved to reward with understanding of his Word not those who diligently search the Bible for enlightenment or for the power of knowledge but those who do it to seek  him . Hebrews 11:6   Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek  him . Matthew 6:33   But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well. Jeremiah 29:13   You shall seek me, and find me, when you shall search for me  with all your heart . (Emphasis mine.) By wanting you to seek him with all your heart, God is a little like a girl who plays hard to get with the guy she is deeply in love with, hoping it will entice you to fall even more in love with him. If someone who loves you went to great effort to write to you, it would be disrespectful not to read it carefully, but it would also be disrespectful when he visits if you ignore him and just read the letter. Eternal life is not to know the Bible but to know God ( John 17:3 ). The greatest commandment is not to love God’s Word but to love God himself. Yes, if you love God you will love his Word, but you can love Bible study without loving God. Yes, it is vital to read the Bible with a view to living it, but not out of legalism or dreary duty but out of a passionate longing to better know God, the Love of your life, and to delight him. We should read God’s Word with the relish of a little boy eager to grow up and be like Daddy; like a love-crazed teen opening her first love letter; like a mother pouring over a letter from her P.O.W. son, wondering if he is trying to get a deeper message past censors; like a student not content to presume the meaning of a book but constantly asking questions of the teacher he has a crush on. The Lord keeps much of its meaning a closely guarded secret from casual readers because he aches for your love. The Author of the Bible longs for Bible reading to be a time of intimate, two-way conversation. He wants us to come to the Bible asking not merely, “What was the author telling his contemporaries?” but “What are you wanting to tell me right now, Lord?” It is common to engage in an inner dialog when reading the Bible, asking such questions as, “I wonder what this means? Could it mean this?” In contrast, God longs for us to turn it into prayer, saying such things as, “What does this mean, Lord?” Thank you for the truth of this passage. Help me put this verse into practice. Forgive me for what this verse convicts me of.” Don’t just read the Bible but pray the Bible. Come to it not merely to learn but to prompt your prayer life – to provide you with things to talk over with God. Search the Scriptures not for your mind’s sake but for your heart’s sake. The result will not only be more enjoyable and satisfying but it moves God to share his heart with you, opening the Word to you in a very special and accurate way. To abandon hermeneutics would be a mistake, but the best hermeneutics is not enough. This is why Scripture does not give us lessons in hermeneutics but instead emphasizes spiritual and heart issues. In fact, one of the frustrations of modern Bible scholars is that often not even the inspired writers of Scripture followed the principles of Bible interpretation promoted by today’s theologians!   How Blind Are You? Consider the Jews of whom Jesus said: John 5:39-40  You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about me. Yet you will not come to me, that you may have life.   Some of these students of the Word wanted Jesus dead. Even after the resurrection, many of them could reverently read the Old Testament and not realize that it points to Jesus, their Messiah. We tend to feel as spiritually superior to them as they felt superior to those who murdered the prophets. In reality, despite our claims to being Spirit-filled, if we had our memories stripped down to the information these Jews had – the Old Testament and the bare facts about Jesus, without any explanation – most of us, like them, would have missed many of Jesus’ fulfillments of Scripture.   How many of us, for example, would have seen Herod’s slaughter of babies in Bethlehem or little Jesus’ stay in Egypt or him growing up in Nazareth as fulfillment of Scripture ( Matthew 2:14-23 )? Had we been trained in modern hermeneutics, it is even more certain that we would have missed most Old Testament allusions to Jesus. We are not as different to those spiritually blind Jews as we suppose.   The Holy Spirit might be our Teacher, but that means the end of spiritual ignorance no more than turning up at Medical School makes one a top surgeon. How much do we listen to our Teacher? To what extent do we follow his instructions? How much do we do our own thing or fill our minds with the instructions of lesser teachers?   Correctly interpreting the Word of God is as supernatural and as dependent upon the Holy Spirit as the original writing of the Bible.   2 Peter 1:20-21   First of all, you must understand that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, because no prophecy ever came by the impulse of man, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God . (RSV)   The Bible is a book with supernatural origins divinely intended to be understood only by people who can tap into the supernatural.   Without good hermeneutics, we would be off with the fairies but without personal divine enlightenment we would be equally lost. The Bible is our map; the Holy Spirit is our guide. The scale of the map is so large that we need the guide. The guide is so softly spoken that we need the map to confirm that we have correctly heard. Without close attention to both we’ll get lost. This is not because of any deficiency in either of them. It was always intended that they would work together.   “ You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God ” chided Jesus  ( Matthew 22:29 ). We swell with pride. Jesus’ rebuke does not apply to us! He then went on to say that God telling Moses, “ I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ” proves that the dead are raised. Who of us would have gleaned that from this Scripture?   About those Jews whose intense Bible study actually stopped them from becoming Christians, Paul wrote: 2 Corinthians 3:14-16   But their minds were hardened, for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant [the Old Testament] the same veil remains, because in Christ it passes away. But to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.   Those who were so tragically mistaken in their understanding of Scripture lacked neither intelligence nor knowledge. In fact, they were superior in both departments to most Christians. As Paul wrote: 1 Corinthians 1:19-29  For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, I will bring the discernment of the discerning to nothing .” Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the lawyer of this world? Hasn’t God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God, the world through its wisdom didn’t know God, it was God’s good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those who believe. . . not many are wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, and not many noble . . God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. . . that no flesh should boast before God. It wasn’t intelligence or knowledge, but a spiritual blockage that kept these Jews blinded to the truth.   1 Corinthians 2:9-14   But as it is written, “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man . . .” But to us, God revealed them through the Spirit. . . . we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God, that we might know the things that were freely given to us . . . Now the natural man doesn’t receive the things of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to him, and he can’t know them, because they are spiritually discerned.    We have just noted that the Spirit is given “ that we might know ” ( 1 Corinthians 2:12 )  and  Acts 5:32  tells us that the Spirit is given to those who obey God. These truths combine to form something close to what I consider to be a key insight from Jesus: John 7:17   If anyone desires to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or if I am speaking from myself.   Jesus is saying that whether God gives someone the supernatural insight to discern the divine origin of Jesus’ teaching hinges on that person’s willingness to do God’s will. We find this strongly hinted at elsewhere: Ezekiel 12:2   Son of man, you dwell in the middle of the rebellious house, who have eyes to see, and don’t see, who have ears to hear, and don’t hear; for they are a rebellious house.   Note the strong connection between rebelliousness (resisting God’s will) and an inability to see and hear spiritual truth. This explains many a blockage to spiritual understanding. Are we willing to pay whatever it costs to do God’s will? To what extent do we choose to deny ourselves, sweating as it were drops of blood, while we sob “not my will, but yours” then take up our cross and follow our Lord to a torturous death for God’s sake? That, to a large measure, determines how closed to spiritual truth God will keep us.   It is because correct Bible interpretation is a product not of intellectual skills but of divine revelation, that we have such Scriptures as: Deuteronomy 29:4   But the Lord has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, to this day.   Isaiah 29:10-11  For the Lord has poured out on you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes, the prophets; and he has covered your heads, the seers. All vision has become to you like the words of a book that is sealed  . . .   Matthew 13:10-16  The disciples came, and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” He answered them, “To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven, but it is not given to them. For whoever has, to him will be given, and he will have abundance, but whoever doesn’t have, from him will be taken away even that which he has. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they don’t see, and hearing, they don’t hear, neither do they understand. In them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says, ‘By hearing you will hear, and will in no way understand; Seeing you will see, and will in no way perceive: for this people’s heart has grown callous, their ears are dull of hearing, they have closed their eyes; or else perhaps they might perceive with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and would turn again; and I would heal them.’ “But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear . . . .”   We are continually tempted to dismiss Scripture’s warnings as applying to someone else, not us, as if becoming a Christian renders us immune to deception or spiritual blindness. In the light of what Jesus said above, we might think the disciples would never develop a hardened heart. After all, they were Christ’s chosen; the privileged few to whom “it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven” It was the others who had eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear spiritual truth, right? Well read this: Mark 8:17-18   . . . “ Why do you reason that it’s because you have no bread? Don’t you perceive yet, neither understand? Is your heart still hardened? Having eyes, don’t you see? Having ears, don’t you hear?  . . .   No matter how close to Jesus and spiritually privileged we might be, we are not beyond falling into spiritual blindness that stops us from seeing spiritual truths that we desperately need to know.   To be “ever hearing but never understanding” is a terrifying predicament, when it is talking not of trying to operate a DVD recorder but of spiritual truth. And it applied not to the intellectually disadvantaged but to many of Israel’s top Bible scholars. Training one’s mind is important, but Bible interpretation is such an intensely spiritual exercise that one’s heart and spirit are even more critical than one’s mind. Consider, for example, the implications of these Scriptures:   Mark 6:51-52   He got into the boat with them; and the wind ceased, and they were very amazed among themselves, and marveled; for they hadn’t understood about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.  [In other words, their hardened hearts prevented them from discerning from previous revelation who Jesus really was.]   Luke 24:45   Then he opened their minds [ie, it took an act of God], that they might understand the Scriptures .   John 16:13-14  However when he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth . . . He will glorify me, for he will take from what is mine, and will declare it to you.   Jesus taught in parables that bamboozled listeners. As if that were not enough to lose followers, he even did things that offended people who were seeking to uphold Scripture. For instance, in the eyes of many he seemed to deliberately break one of the Ten Commandments by repeatedly choosing to heal on the Sabbath (which ended at sundown) rather that say, “Come back in a few hours.” He knowingly said offensive things without bothering to explain himself, such as “ unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you don’t have life in yourselves ” ( John 6:53 ).   Jesus’ approach was not a one-off for God. Jesus came to reveal the heart of the Father and he did this even in his choice of teaching methods. Like Jesus’ teaching, the Almighty has deliberately made the entire Bible offensive to intellectuals and easy to misinterpret and hard to understand. In fact, the very heart of Christianity – the cross – is like that: 1 Corinthians 1:23  but we preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Greeks   Our Lord purposely makes spiritual truth and even salvation an offense to people who pride themselves in their intellect or piety. He does this because he longs for us to be genuine – as manifested by our sincerity and humility – and he craves intimacy with us. It is faith, sincerity and humility, not native intelligence or prideful self-sufficiency, that he honors.   When Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus said that this revelation came to Peter not from people but from God himself  (Matthew 16:17 ). That is the nature of revelation. It comes not from flesh and blood, nor from intellect and study but from God. True revelation is always consistent with Scripture and usually comes through Scripture – often the rigorous study of Scripture – but it comes from the  Spirit’s  interpretation of Scripture, not from our human attempt at interpretation.   Since the Bible is God’s Word, not ours, it is his prerogative to use it however he wishes. It would be typical of our Lord – you could almost call it his sense of humor – to reveal to a simple person a precious truth that a theologian has utterly missed, and to flabbergast – perhaps even deliberately offend – the scholar by letting that simple person discover the truth by taking a Scripture out of context.   We might not worship idols of stone, but to how many intelligent and/or mature Christians does the Scripture apply, “ Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools ” ( Romans 1:22   )?   Before such a God, I can only fall in adoration, declaring: Romans 11:33-34   Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out! “For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? ”   Blockages to Spiritual Truth One of the things convincing me that the Gospels are authentic is that if the disciples – the eye witnesses to the inside story – had any tendency to embellish the truth, they would have portrayed themselves in at least a slightly better light. These carriers of the story let themselves be portrayed as not just unremarkable but – to put it politely – as if they had below average intelligence. We see them not only squabbling over petty matters and being regularly chided by Jesus for being of “little faith” but we find them not understanding parables until Jesus privately explained them. What seems almost incomprehensibly ignorant of them, however, is that Jesus kept telling them he would suffer and rise from the dead and it kept going straight over their heads. This is not only hinted at in every Gospel, it is specifically highlighted not just once but twice in the one Gospel: Luke 9:22   saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up .” A week or so later, Jesus said: Luke 9:44-45  “ Let these words sink into your ears, for the Son of Man will be delivered up into the hands of men. ” But they didn’t understand this saying. It was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it, and they were afraid to ask him about this saying. Nine chapters later, Jesus was still teaching them about his suffering and their understanding was still abysmal.: Luke 18:31-34   He took the twelve aside, and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets concerning the Son of Man will be completed. For he will be delivered up to the Gentiles, will be mocked, treated shamefully, and spit on. They will scourge and kill him. On the third day, he will rise again.” They understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they didn’t understand the things that were said. In  Luke  alone, this is the seventh time Jesus had spoken of his future suffering. No doubt part of their difficulty was not realizing that Jesus this time was speaking very literally. Their inability to understand, however, is very significant to us because if these chosen men of God could miss spiritual truth, so can we. In the next page, we will explore this vital matter.   C O N T I N U E D  Next Page

Condemned to Hell?   A Testimony of Hope About the Unforgivable Sin   I found forgiveness after being certain I had blasphemed the Holy Spirit and was rendered unpardonable by being guilty of many different types of sin, so grave that each seemed unforgivable.         How I overcame chronic fear, condemnation and uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts.     About this page:   You are about to read of someone who not only had many reasons for being sure he was unforgivable, he felt he was one of the worst sinners on the planet. Some testimonies given further on in this series of webpages are by people who have lived more sheltered lives and dearly love their Lord even while disgusting and blasphemous thoughts rage through their minds. Regardless of which of the testimonies you can better identify with, you will still benefit from this current webpage because it gives vital help and inspiration in showing us how to deal with feeling unforgivable and coping with vile, unwanted thoughts.   This dear brother has battled years of feeling convinced that his many grave offenses had rendered him unforgivable. You need to read the full page to know all the different reasons why he felt this way, but to entice you, let me list some of them now.   My friend didn’t just turn his back on God. He crashed all the way from having tried so hard to be a good Christian to blaming Christianity for all his problems and hating God. He’s not the first person to quit church, but after doing so, if he ever entered a church he would hear foul language in his mind. He would walk out sick to his stomach. Day and night, thoughts screamed at him that he was damned to hell and had sold his soul to the devil. Whenever he tried to get close to God, his mind would go into overdrive, cursing God and his Son. It wasn’t long before the Holy Spirit was included in the gross and disgusting thoughts flooding his mind. In addition to being bombarded with uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts, however, he has also  deliberately  called God every offensive swear word he could think of. As you read his story, you will learn how, despite it all, he now enjoys God’s forgiveness.   Precisely because getting to the point of believing God forgives him has been a hard slog, his prolonged fight with condemnation has empowered him to help set others free in a way that those who have had easier lives cannot do. In my eyes he is a hero – perhaps the greatest I have had contact with – because of what it has taken for him to reach his current spiritual position. And I believe heaven sees him this way.     My friend finds himself in a dilemma in that he loves his family and in no way wants to embarrass them and yet he longs to be completely open with you. These conflicting goals are best achieved by not mentioning his name.   Grantley Morris - Founder of Netburst.net and ghostwriter of this webpage     The Testimony   I saw God as far meaner than my abusive father could ever be. Let me explain:   My dad hated everyone he came in contact with. He would not only punish me – I could accept that – but half the time I had no idea what I had done to cause it. Whenever he accused me, the truth wasn’t enough. He would beat me until I told him the version he wanted to hear, which was usually a lie just to get him to stop. Then as I cried hysterically, I was hit again and again until I could make myself stop crying. I particularly hated being lifted completely off the floor by my hair and then – still held by my hair alone – dragged up the steps to my room. The beatings seemed to last for as long as he was in a bad mood. I was the oldest child and seemed to be blamed for everything and take everyone’s punishment.   I honestly can’t recall a single moment in my childhood when I was happy. Even at a young age I had suicidal tendencies. I remember beating my head on the steps till I bled. I was always amazed at other families. They were so nice.   I was told God is love, but I could never see it. I thought if my earthly father is like he is, God must be far worse.   Church Horrors   My father only sent me to church as a free baby sitter. I remember my second time at Sunday school. I brought a Bible with me and had it confiscated because it wasn’t the old King James Version. I think my Sunday school teacher burned it. I wanted to read God’s Word but I couldn’t understand old English.   This church said I was going to hell because I couldn’t speak in tongues. That devastated me. They taught that if I ever left the church I was turning my back on God and he would never forgive me. They gave vivid descriptions of hell and repeatedly said that if I didn’t witness to others I would be held responsible for them going to hell. My friends would scream my name from hell asking why I never told them about God. But I was so extremely shy that for me to tell others about God seemed next to impossible.   I was constantly tormented with fear because I couldn’t speak in tongues and I had many nightmares that I was left behind in the rapture. I thought I knew God’s word pretty well but I somehow used it to condemn myself. I thought I had to be literally perfect or I’d go to hell. I was constantly paranoid about God.   Hating God   When I was 13, my family moved house and I stopped attending church. It was a relief, actually. Slowly I plunged from being a good kid to being a mean-spirited, hateful person. After having tried so hard to be a good Christian, I ended up hating the God I believed had rejected me and always would.   Over the years I’ve read a lot of Christian testimonies but after each I would say, “Well, God forgave that person but I’ve been far more sinful than him.” I’ve since discovered that making people suppose they are worse than almost everyone else is a favorite trick of the Evil One. Nevertheless, there’s no doubt in my mind that if anyone is guilty it’s me.   I threw a rock through a church window. I beat up my friends who went to church. I ripped up a Bible and I told my parents I hate Jesus. I told God I would never worship him; I would worship Satan instead. I postered my bedroom walls with 666 and satanic symbols. What I liked most about my favorite band was that they had a demon as their mascot and sang songs like “Children of the Damned,” and “Number of the Beast”.   I was drinking and on drugs by the age of 14. I found that when I was on drugs or drinking I didn’t have to think about God. It also seemed to numb my conscience. I had no idea it was not God who was tormenting me with guilt and fear, but Satan pretending to be God.   I would often visualize killing my dad. My brother and I plotted to kill him but we couldn’t come up with a good enough plan. At least that’s how I saw it. My brother didn’t care what the plan was; he just wanted my help to murder our father.   I often used to beat my brother; pounding him over and over. I feel guilt to this day because he is the most violent person I have ever known. I surely didn’t help. I remember him lifting weights saying, “I’m going to beat you and Dad up one day.” He has, several times. I don’t blame him. He has just been released from prison; having served two years for felony domestic violence.   At about 18 years of age, thoughts that I was damned to hell and had sold my soul to the devil began hounding me night and day. I had had terrible fears before but this was my first taste of extreme fear. It threw me into such severe depression that I was hospitalized for about two weeks. I was eventually given medication that made the thoughts go away. One day I noticed the thoughts were gone. I told myself I would go back to the Lord. Only I never did.   Inner torment like a volcano seething within me fueled an explosive temper. I have often smashed my own possessions in rage and punched holes in walls. I would get so angry while driving that I ran over street signs and other things. I had such little desire to live that I would do reckless things like racing towards train tracks at high speed, not caring if a train was coming.   On the rare times I entered a church I would hear swearing in my mind and I would fill with repulsive, sexually orientated thoughts about Jesus. I would leave feeling disgusted.   My mind would fill with cursing God and Jesus. This drove me to conclude I had committed the unforgivable sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. It wasn’t long before the Holy Spirit himself was included in the obscene thoughts. It seemed like the more I wanted the thoughts to stop the more they started. I even had thoughts that I was the Antichrist. Thoughts that God was going to strike me down led to thoughts of rebellion and defiant dares like, “Go ahead, God, kill me!”   With filthy, blasphemous and distressing thoughts usually coming whenever I tried to get close to God, I found the easiest way was to stay out of religion. I began to look at Christianity as the cause of my problem.   Comment by Grantley: Evil Spirits   My friend is so sensitive to the differing needs of readers that he wants no one to feel uncomfortable over the fact that he has already mentioned the devil and there is more to come. So before proceeding, let me put your mind at ease by explaining why this is not a scary or kinky subject.   The mind-boggling rate at which new scientific discoveries are being made affirms not only how much we are learning, but how much more is yet to be discovered. Today’s science is so much in its infancy that not long ago it was believed that the most scientific way to study human psychology was to consider behavior alone and completely ignore the fact that humans have thoughts. If even thoughts are virtually beyond the reach of present-day science, it is not surprising that the spirit realm is too much for current scientific investigation to handle.   Some people know God exists, and yet do not think evil spirits exist. That is ridiculous. We just have to look at the world to see there is much good and much evil. If God is the spiritual power behind the good, then the evil around us also has spiritual powers behind it. Being evil, these powers feel no obligation to be truthful. They love being deceptive and do all they can to give God a bad name.   It is common for Christians to speak of Satan trying to tempt or deceive them by putting thoughts into their minds. (Technically, it is usually Satan’s agents – demons – who do the actual work, but it is legitimate to see Satan as the ultimate source.) At first thought, one might suppose that a person would have to be evil for Satan to put thoughts into his/her mind. Nothing could be further from the truth.   The apostle Paul was not writing to demon-possessed madmen when he wrote, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but . . . against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). Not only was Paul writing to ordinary Christians, he included himself by saying “  our  struggle”. So this is normal.   All of us are influenced by the spirit world (God and his angels and Satan and his angels – demons) and it happens far more frequently in our lives than most of us realize. The Bible says Satan spoke to the Holy Son of God, tempting him. So not even the most saintly people can avoid it. In fact, the more godly the person, the more you might expect that person to be a target.   The most common way for the Tempter to operate is to put thoughts in our minds that seem indistinguishable from our own thoughts. So there is nothing scary about having thoughts whispered into our minds that have their source in intelligences other than our own. In fact, it is comforting to realize that many of the evil thoughts that plague us and fill us with guilt and shame are not even our own thoughts. We don’t have to own them.   Let’s return to my friend’s story.   Failed Attempts to Return to God   I often tried to return to God. I’ve said the sinner’s prayer countless times – my best estimate is literally a hundred times. Having been taught as a child at church that I should pray for the Holy Spirit and that it would be a moving experience, I was associating God with a feeling. Rather than trusting God’s Word concerning salvation, I was looking for a positive feeling as an indication that God had accepted me. Each time I tried to reach out to God, I waited for something positive to happen, only to feel spurned by God. Not only was there no positive feeling within the timeframe that I had hoped – that would have been disconcerting enough – but I would hit a wall of fear. I have been in life-threatening situations and felt less fear. So oppressive was the guilt and fear whenever I considered returning to God, that I always felt compelled to turn away from God.   Believing that the fear was from God, I concluded that only he could take it away. I sat in a prison of fear waiting for God to release me, not realizing that Jesus had already paid the price for my release. I had no idea I was putting myself through unnecessary mental torment. I could have just ignored the fear and walked out the prison door. Rather than pushing through the fear, I gave into the awful feeling, having wrongly thought the fear was God letting me know I was doomed because my gross sins had rendered me unforgivable. This belief would often push me into depression. I would then get on medication and return to my sinful lifestyle. I kept going through this same cycle over and over.   It seemed the only way I could function was to eliminate God from my life, so I did just that. Things went fine for a while. I got married and had a son. I got off illicit drugs and alcohol. I even started a business. For the first time in my life I was finally happy.   Then I began to think that all these good things were from God. I told myself, “It can’t be! There is no God!”   I logged on to an atheist website and assured myself God doesn’t exist.   Facing my Fears   “Why do so many people love God?” I puzzled, “He wants only to send everyone to hell.” Wondering if I had overlooked something, I explored a number of websites and learned a lot about God. I asked myself, “Why do I despise God so much?” Within a couple of days I was once again overwhelmed by fear. I told myself, “This fear is surely God again; I remember this from years ago.” I immediately cried and began repenting. I resolved to turn my back on everything evil in my life and face my fear of God.   I started reading the Bible but was afraid it would only confirm that I’m condemned. Before long, it felt like everything in the Bible somehow condemned me. My mother worried about my spiritual state and visited me a lot. I would often tell her, “Look, this verse right here proves I’m going to hell!” We would then go over it and discover its meaning was totally different. I couldn’t figure out why I could have gotten such a condemning message from it.   With verses seeming to scream condemnation at me I would fill with fear and stop reading the Bible.   I bought a book about spiritual warfare. All was fine for a while, then even that book seemed to be condemning me and I put it down. Eventually, I forced myself to open the book again. I re-read the condemning sentence I had underlined. To my surprise, I couldn’t find anything in it that could lead me to feel condemned.   I began to notice that as I read, fear would overwhelm me, causing me to throw the book down without finishing the sentence.   It took me a long while to realize it, but finally the truth of 2 Timothy 1:7 hit my spirit: “For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” This discovery changed everything. Contrary to what I had always thought, the fear and condemnation I suffered were not from God. Clinging to this truth has revolutionized my life. The truth of that verse has become so real to me that I now look back and can hardly believe that for most of my life I had not realized that my fear of drawing close to God was not from God but from the devil who wanted to keep me from God.   It is so ironic that I feared my Savior – the one person who was truly able to rescue me. If only I had realized years ago that he longed to help me, and loved me with infinite love.   I look back on all the unpleasant things in my life that I had considered were from God and realize that they were not from him at all. I had not been rebelling against the true God but against a beast that not only did not love me but who continually rejected me and filled me with fear. It turned out that this beast was not the true God but just Satan trying to fool me.   Prayer Was So Very Hard   Whenever I prayed, repulsive, uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts would swamp my mind. Appalled, I would stop praying. Slowly I convinced myself that despite the blasphemies buzzing through my head, God wanted to hear from me. So one day, instead of stopping because of the thoughts, I told myself, “Too bad! I’m going to pray to God everyday, regardless!” I prayed hard, ignoring the thoughts. If the thoughts increased, I prayed longer. It was a daily battle, but now when I pray my mind is usually quiet and peaceful. I guess the devil eventually figured out his trick no longer worked with me, since no matter what he threw at me I kept praying anyhow.   I used to pray really quickly. Now I pray 15-20 minutes and lose track of time. I get up from prayer feeling refreshed. I have new thoughts of happiness I’ve never felt before. Just occasionally, a disgusting thought might come but I refuse to let it rock me. I’m winning.   Yes, these days I usually feel comforted when I pray and I find it satisfying, but I only got there by forcing myself to pray no matter how I felt.   Battling Negative Thoughts   I always told people, “I can’t think positive because I feel so horrible.”   Thoughts would come, saying no one likes me, I’m not worthy to worship God, don’t leave the house, I’m worthless, I’m a failure, I’ll never feel better, there’s no hope, just give up. These thoughts used to devastate me. They were so bad that I could pretty much do the opposite of what I was thinking and it would be the right answer.   For so long I had accepted thoughts that I was no good or that I was evil; supposing the thoughts to be from God. I now know that they were tricks from Satan, whom the Bible calls the Accuser.   Slowly I learned to identify my enemy. I’ve discovered that the Deceiver’s thoughts blend in with my own. At first I was unable to tell where my thoughts ended and Satan’s began. In a split second he can finish my own thought with a swear word. I no longer consider this abnormal. I believe everyone is inwardly attacked with thoughts that are not his/her own. Some people have been better than me at ignoring the thoughts and not accepting them as their own or as coming from God. These people have had an easier life, but now I’m catching up by teaching myself not to accept thoughts that do not line up with the Bible’s teaching that God is good, patient, loving and forgiving. By continually training myself, I have become increasingly skilled at knowing what thoughts are not my own and should be rejected.   The Deceiver tries to get people to turn inwards. I have learned to avoid this. Rather than analyze undesirable thoughts or let myself feel upset by them, I do my best to ignore them and focus on other things. I might read the Bible or help someone. If the thoughts are blasphemous, I refuse to be fooled into thinking they are my own thoughts. I know they are from the devil and I refuse to blame myself for what he whispers in my head. Since salvation hinges on faith (what one believes) not works (what one does), I would only become responsible if I believed the blasphemies echoing in my head. And even if I were stupid enough to believe them, forgiveness would be waiting for me the moment I came to my senses and changed my beliefs.   The Enemy Uses Feelings to his Advantage   When overwhelmed by intense guilt and fear, it is very hard not to cave in to these false but highly convincing feelings and revert to believing them, rather than believing reality. I used to let my feelings control me. Now my goal is to control my feelings. I don’t always win but I’m getting there because every time I refuse to believe the guilt and fear, it is a major victory that weakens the deceiving power of these feelings.   Sometimes, to help me see reality, I think of it this way: no matter how atrocious my sins might have been, can I imagine God telling his Son Jesus that he had not suffered enough to forgive my sins? When Jesus suffered for the sins of the world, he took my blame upon himself. For me to blame myself and hold on to guilt would render Jesus’ suffering a waste. So to honor him I do my best not to keep blaming myself.   I have often thought God’s patience and love for me has run out but I have to remember that he is God. He has far more patience and love than any human will ever have. I lived most of my life feeling like God was always waiting for me to mess up so that he could condemn me to hell, but Jesus said he didn’t come to condemn the world. I had thought God was like my dad, but now that I’m a father I can look at God being like a father in an entirely different light. No matter how my own father acted, I know I’m never hoping for my son to make a mistake or looking for a reason to write him out of my will.   I still get unwanted thoughts and feelings but nowhere near as often. Now, when I get a bad thought, I find myself laughing because I’ll recognize it as a lie. I’ll say to the devil, “Get lost, looser!”   Comment by Grantley: Continued Attacks   What makes this testimony so true to life is that although the attacks have lessened, they have not completely stopped. This is exactly what every victorious Christian can expect. People who quit smoking, for instance, end up having less cravings then when they first quit but even years later they will have the occasional yearning for a cigarette.   When, during his 40 days of fasting, Jesus had total victory over every temptation thrown at him, the devil left him “for a season” or, as the NIV puts it, “until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). With the Bible condensing Jesus’ 30 year ministry into booklet sized gospels, one wouldn’t expect his every temptation to be listed. When Jesus had to say, “Get behind me, Satan,” while Peter was trying to talk him out of going the way of the cross, it was almost certainly a satanic attack. Likewise, the devil surely played a role when Jesus was in the garden agonizing over doing God’s will. There were no doubt other incidents of satanic attack in Jesus’ life.   Clinging to Truth   Jesus called Satan the father of lies. How can I fight Satan unless I know the truth? No wonder I used to get so attacked with false condemnation and fear when I read the Bible. The Enemy was desperate to keep me away from the liberating truth of God’s Word. You know how I had to keep persisting with reading it, despite all the false but terrifying condemnation. Gradually, however, I began finding immense help in the Bible.   John 10:10 really helped me out: “The thief comes only to steal kill and destroy, I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.”   I liked this so much that I printed it and attached it to my bulletin board. I read this verse every time I was tempted to sin. The first part is a reminder that if I let sin have its way it would destroy me. The second part gives me hope of a better life.   Another Scripture I found invaluable is James 4:7, “Submit yourselves, then, to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.”   Keeping this verse in my mind reminds me that when in faith I hold on to the power of God’s Word, the devil has to flee. I broke many bad habits by resisting. Instead of my bad habits, I gained a good habit: resisting bad thoughts the instant they entered my mind. I learned that thinking about a temptation gives it time to snowball into something greater and so rejecting the thought immediately makes it easier to resist.   It took me a long while to realize that I make the devil’s day whenever I start worrying about demons or imagining things. He loves to play on the imagination. Most of my temptations and negative thoughts came to me while daydreaming. I need to take my thoughts captive and not let them run off and disturb me.   I paid attention to every thought I had, asking myself, “Is this a good thought or a bad thought.” If it was bad I called it a lie. I refused to act on any bad thought. Over time I recognized these thoughts as from the devil or a demon. I had one telling me to smoke. (I used to smoke two packs a day.) Every time it told me to light a cigarette or take just one hit I immediately spoke loudly, calling it a liar. When in public I said it in my head.   I resisted the devil by not believing his lies. But I also hit him with the truth. That makes me feel real good. I only use short statements of truth. The devil wants me to have a debate with him but that would be giving him the upper hand. I’ve found it’s important not to get too involved with the Tempter. Jesus didn’t strike up a conversation or debate with the devil. He boldly and emphatically declared Bible verses and told him to get lost – nothing more! (Matthew 4:1-10) I’ve discovered that’s all any of us have to do. So I don’t bother arguing with the devil; I know the truth and I’m holding on to it, no matter what.   The devil might throw a bad feeling at me but I remember he’s hurting ten times worse. Every time Satan hears me saying, “That’s a lie!” it hurts him bad. The feelings he puts on me are just his desperate attempt to get me to stop because he’s scared. He knows he’s losing.   If demons want to put awful thoughts into my head, they are going to hate being near me because I’m committed to worshipping Jesus until the day I die. For the first time in my life I’m winning and I’m not going to let some thought or feeling rob me and drag me back to the black hole in which I used to live.   I used the same tactics when fighting urges to look at porn or women other than my wife. If the thought wasn’t good, I called it a lie. If the Bible doesn’t say it is true, I called it a lie. When I feel unforgiven, I call it a lie. It worked. The devil has little power over me now.   This is not the power of positive thinking. It works only with the help of the Lord. I pray in the morning, afternoon and night.   Early on, the devil did his best to trick me into going it alone. I thought I’d get myself cleaned up, quit smoking and then I’ll go back to the Lord. Wrong! Gradually I learnt that Jesus is with me every step. He was already by my side; I just didn’t realize it. I couldn’t fight it alone, nor did I have to try to.   Rather than dwelling on upsetting thoughts that would plague my mind, I tried to focus on establishing a relationship with God through prayer and to make uplifting thoughts of Jesus the center of my attention.   Medication   I originally had doctors treat me with medication. It helped but my problem returned after I stopped the medication. I’m not against medication. I believe it helps people until they are strong enough to fight without drugs. This time, however, I’m asking the Lord for help. I like the fact that I’m not masking the problem.   Faith is something we work at. It doesn’t come all at once. If we are not healed we shouldn’t blame ourselves; we just keep on believing. Eventually we may reach a point where we can find healing.   I achieved much in just 40 days. I’ve been held back and missed so much. But now for the first time in 32 years I’m winning. If I don’t read the Bible or say go to church I find myself slipping into depression and fear. I’ve discovered that prayer, Bible reading and church – the very things that for so many years I avoided because I would get so attacked whenever I did them – are what I need for a fulfilling, victorious life.   Discovering God’s Goodness   I can never fully understand God’s wisdom, but I now know that even when I don’t understand, he has a loving reason for everything he does. If God had healed my depression I would have mistakenly seen healing not as an act of grace – which all healing is – but as divine acceptance of what at the time was my sinful lifestyle. So the healing I desperately wanted would have ended up doing more harm than good by keeping me in bondage to sin.   I used to get upset because God never answered certain prayers. Then I realized I wasn’t worshipping God; I was using him for my personal needs. I was treating him like a Santa Claus. I didn’t pick up on it for a while but now I know better and now I give God the praise he deserves.   My Battle with Panic Attacks   Three or four years ago, I developed a form of social anxiety disorder. Mentioning this might seem to be straying from the thrust of the webpage but it is common for people suffering false condemnation to be prone to such mental afflictions as anxiety or panic attacks. Moreover, the way I am overcoming this challenge reinforces the method I have successfully used to fight condemnation.   A back injury forced me to change jobs. Since I look young for my 32 years, many of my new customers thought I must lack the experience to fix their problem. Trying to convince them otherwise was so difficult that I began to fear having to confront people who doubted my abilities. My fears escalated until I was having panic attacks on the way to their door. There’s nothing more scary than trying to conduct business when you feel like you’re having a heart attack. I persevered for as long as I could, but I finally had to give up the job, despite having pretty much mastered the trade.   Things grew worse until I was having a panic attack over just about any social occasion. I even found myself unable to leave my house. I knew in my head there was nothing to fear, but still I would panic.   After studying the subject I’ve concluded that with this problem it is best not to push oneself too hard. I had forced myself to face these fears and it led only to more anxiety and more fears. It’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.   I’ve just started to fight this battle but here’s what I’ve been doing. First, I have put all my trust in God. I have learnt that when a fear comes I must eliminate it immediately. If I let myself think about it, then in just two or three seconds it will begin to mushroom. Then I’m daydreaming and having anticipation anxiety. I can never beat it by thinking about it.   When a fearful thought pops in my head I treat it like it’s the devil talking to me. I immediately say to myself, “That’s a lie!” and put the thought out of my mind. I don’t take the thought any further than that. Sometimes I back it up with a relevant quote from the Bible, much like Jesus did when the devil tried to tempt him.   When I first started doing this I found myself saying, “That’s a lie!” all day long. That doesn’t matter. Even that is progress.   We have a bodily reaction to every thought. This, for instance, is how lie detectors (polygraphs) work. I’m finally learning to turn this fact of life around for good. When I find myself getting fearful I start thinking good thoughts about God and worshiping him inwardly. This not only helps take my mind off the fear, it ends up calming my whole body.   Achieving this degree of control hasn’t come easily. I’ve had to train myself to monitor my thoughts and, upon identifying a negative thought, respond by redirecting my thoughts to more uplifting things. While I’m thinking about fear I’m not thinking about God, and vice versa.   A Recent Battle With Condemnation   A couple of years ago, I got drunk and began wondering why God let me suffer all the time. Soon, I was calling God every bad swear word I could think of. Someone had told me it was okay to vent anger at God. He said God could handle it; he’s seen it all. Well, I took it way too far. Just five minutes later I came to my senses and was appalled at what I had done.   Recently, the enemy reminded me of this event and I was again terrified that this past event had rendered me unforgivable. Without Grantley’s web site ( www.netburst.net ) to help me see clearly again, I think I would have gone insane.   Recognizing my previous mistake, however, had given me a new respect for God and a new outlook on life. This experience was a wake-up call that has probably saved me from drifting away from God. I now make every day count.   God forgives instantly but my problem seems to be forgiving myself. Every time I think about not being forgiven I’m thrown into severe depression, usually for a couple days or so. This website helps bring me back to reality.   I struggle repeatedly with the thought that I have committed spiritual suicide. It is easy to see how loving and forgiving our God is when you take away the lies and misconceptions, but I’m repeatedly hit with lies and distorted truths. To counteract this I have to continually keep in the forefront of my mind the truth that God has forgiven me.   My Dad has Changed   Since I have shared less than complimentary impressions of my father as he was while I was growing up, it is only fair to mention that over the years he has changed. I gradually became aware that although he didn’t specifically say it, he was showing me by his actions that he was sorry for his past behavior. I noticed that he didn’t overreact to many things the way he used to and he was treating me more like a son. At first I was angry because I thought he was acting. It took time but I began to have a change of heart towards him and was finally able to forgive.   We must accept the fact that people can drastically change or how can we expect change in our own lives?   Our relationship is now good. We get along well. He treats me with a great deal of respect. He actually goes out of his way to help me out. He’s always there for me and eager to help me.   Wrap Up   The devil had me believing I disliked God because I was pure evil. I now know I disliked God because I really didn’t know him. The Lord is more wonderful than I could have ever dreamed.   By suffering and dying on my behalf, Jesus gave each one of us immense power over the devil, but it took me a long while to learn how to use it. With Satan stripped of power through Christ’s sacrifice, his only ability is to try to trick people with his lies. He can’t harm any of us except when we choose to believe his lies rather than God’s truth.   I have found that if I continue to believe a lie from the devil, he throws me another lie and then another. I used to accept his lies as a part of my thinking. Now that I have discovered his ploy, I try not to let any thought stay in my mind if it’s negative. I see this as a part of my spiritual warfare and I have noticed much improvement since putting it into practice.   There is no quick fix. I do a little better every day. I have some bad days but for the most part I’m doing well. Most of my unhealthy fear of God has gone. I still occasionally struggle with guilt but even then I try to hold my head up high for our Lord.   It takes constant effort not to slip back into my old thought patterns, but with each attempt I am building new thought habits that will slowly become so strong that they will become my natural reaction.   I have now been reading the Bible regularly because I desperately need it to expose the Enemy’s lies. I have learned that all my misconceptions about God came from verses that were used out of context. What scared me the most at church as a child was when they read the book of Revelation. I was terrified of that book! A friend suggested I should read it. My first thought was, “No way!” I eventually faced my fears and read it. I can honestly say I loved it!   I was getting ready for bed a couple of weeks ago and noticed that my mind was quiet. I didn’t hear negative thoughts, such as anger, hate, thoughts of being condemned and so on. For the first time in my life there was peace and quiet in my mind.   This last Sunday I went to church. I didn’t have one bad thought. It was the best service I ever attended. I felt healthy and close to God.   I find myself becoming free more and more. I’m learning to look to God when fear comes. How different this is to when fear used to make me run from God!   I can now see that I’m saved not by my efforts nor even by my faith. I’m saved by his grace. Through his grace I have faith. Maintaining even a speck of faith can seem almost impossible in the midst of a storm of condemning thoughts but even when my faith seems no match for all the doubts, it only takes a tiny mustard seed of faith. Jesus does the rest.   This webpage is one of many very helpful webpages in this website on this subject. I urge you to print them and read them over and over till they sink deep into your spirit. Remember, it’s not going to happen over night. Be patient. I’m still working on some of this myself, but I’ve proven that it’s worth every bit of effort.   Occasionally, I wake up in the night scared to death. Then I come to my senses and laugh because I know I’m winning. I truly believe the blood and power of Jesus is all I need. I finally see the truth: Jesus came to save me, not to condemn me. He  longs  to save me. I can see for the first time in my life why they say he is a God of love and mercy.   Update   It is approaching a year since the above was written. I thought you would appreciate an update to the story to see if this experience can be continued indefinitely. My friend writes:   I’m happy to say that each day gets a little better. There is a definite improvement since I last wrote.   I still get the occasional disturbing thought but it’s very rare now. I think this is the enemy’s way of checking up on me. Handling the thoughts is less of a battle. Usually, I just laugh them off because I know in my heart that I’m saved.   I regularly remind myself that I’m a new person. It’s hard to believe that just a year ago I smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and lived a very reckless lifestyle. Life is so much easier. I’m no longer bound to bad habits and sin. This is not to say I’m perfect, just different – and I like the changes!   I still have some issues with social anxiety that I’m working on. The main difference is that now I know that with God’s help I can beat this. I no longer have to feel that I’m bound to this forever. God helps and directs my future.   I would encourage anyone with similar struggles to what I’ve been through to seek God. He will forgive all who want to be forgiven.   The Support you Need As a doctor prescribes daily medication, I prescribe daily reading of these webpages. Ensure that your reading includes  Scrupulosity: Serious Help When Worried about Salvation, Blasphemous Thoughts or Persistent Guilt Feelings  and all the pages it leads to, but there is much more listed  Condemned? How to Cope When Riddled with Guilt  and  How Much does God Love Me? Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You .   Next Testimony: Extreme Grace: A Christian who kept doing all he could to force God to reject him

Help If You Sometimes Do Such Things As: * Punish yourself * Hurt yourself * Cut yourself * Abuse yourself * Hit yourself * Pinch yourself * Beat yourself * Mutilate yourself * Whip yourself * Slap yourself * Punch yourself * Stab yourself * Starve yourself * Hit your head against a wall * Deliberately make yourself miserable * Overwork * Try to make yourself ugly by overeating or how you dress * Fantasize about suffering (being raped, tortured, mistreated, or whatever) * Deny yourself legitimate pleasures or happiness * Sabotage relationships that would make you happy Healing and Compassionate Understanding If right now you are teetering on the edge of self-harm and cannot hold off while you delve into longer lasting solutions, go to Self-Harm Alternatives: Emergency Relief and return to this page when you are more able to focus If you feel like hurting yourself, you are not alone, you are not weird and you are not a failure. In fact – although you will need to read much more to understand why – self-harmers fill me with admiration. More Effective Help With the exact mix of factors behind self-harm varying from person to person, an adequate webpage on this subject cannot be short. If you are sometimes attacked by an urge to afflict yourself with pain or harm, you deserve nothing less than answers powerful enough to end your torment. So revolutionary are the answers to self-injury and/or self-hate, that no matter how they are presented they can initially seem off-the-planet or not personally applicable to your situation until you have fully absorbed the entire webpage. So despite any initial qualms, I urge you to keep reading. It could change your life. Self-loathing and/or self-injury is an exceedingly complex issue because it is an expression of the depths of one’s humanity. Self-harm is a manifestation of a need that totally eclipses animals or machines – the need to comprehend complex concepts and emotions and to communicate them with an equally intelligent being. It reveals that you, like all humans, are a breathtakingly intricate, sophisticated and noble being with lofty ideals and a deep yearning to understand and be understood. As beyond belief as it seems, our dilemma is not that we are alone and not understood but simply that we have not grasped how totally known, valued and accepted we really are. When Truth Seems Untrue I will quickly run through what we have just said, providing more confirmation that it is true but before this I should explain why it is so critical, and why it seems so unbelievable. It might have been so much part of your life that you have accepted it as normal but if you engage in self-harm you have almost certainly been repeatedly and horrifically slandered – probably beginning in your most impressionable years. You might have been told by someone whose opinion you respect that you are hopeless, a loser, evil, stupid, or slut or some other putdown. The inevitable consequence is that, like being subjected to years of the cruellest brainwashing, you have come to accept those lies as truth. It has so distorted your perception of yourself that you have most likely deepened the insidious brainwashing still further by repeating the lies to yourself for years. Like becoming an addict through being forcibly given drugs as a child, repeatedly putting yourself down and telling yourself negative things has become an addiction. Just as knowing that heroin is destroying you does not make it easy to stop, so it is with this habit. Anyone, no matter how smart, who has suffered as you have, would end up this way. A genius finds it just as hard to break an addiction as someone less intelligent. The delusion now feels more real to you than the truth. Key people in your life might have treated you like trash but that says nothing about your value and everything about the depravity of those who treated you that way. No matter how numerous, respected or adamant they were; no matter how self-righteous, how much older and how much they beat it into you, they were wrong. People typically get it wrong. They even treated atrociously the most honorable person in the universe. The eternal Son of God was good like no one else. He was innocent, perfect and always right. They repeatedly accused him of being demon possessed and people wanted him dead. Before long, they got their way and the most respected people in the land had him tortured to death like the vilest criminal. Their appalling behavior said nothing about Jesus’ worth. It simply highlighted how wrong they were. So it is with the way people have treated you. In How to Change your Self-Image I explain how difficult it is to break free from the brainwashing of continual mistreatment and putdowns. It can become almost impossible to resist their lies. They might have knocked all the fight out of you, but the truth remains: they were wrong. Not all the slander in the world can change someone’s worth. No matter how much he is slandered, Jesus is truth. Neither can a mountain of slander render mistaken his assessment that you are of infinite worth. Put yourself in a bygone era on a year-long trek through unexplored South American jungles. Your highly experienced guide points the way but everything within you screams that the correct route is in a very different direction. Your life hinges on whether you believe your skilled guide or your highly insistent gut feeling. That is close to the dilemma you now find yourself in. Your well-being and entire future teeters on whether you choose to believe what everything within you screams is true, or whether you put your faith in an entirely different Source of information that says something unbelievably different. Permit me to identify that other Source. I graduated university with an honors degree in psychology but I chose not to follow that path because I discovered something far more powerful in meeting people’s deep needs. Had I pursued psychology I would have more status. It certainly would not have led to riches but I would have made a much more comfortable living than choosing to do everything for free as I do. Nevertheless, having discovered something more powerful than psychology could ever tap into, I refuse to offer half cures. You deserve the best. And that involves something you might have prematurely dismissed. The Creator of the galaxies has infinite knowledge and understanding but that is not the issue: the rest of your life hangs on whether you choose to believe him, when everything within you insists – and your entire life experience seems to confirm – that the opposite is true. God is truth and he longs for you to know the staggering truths about him – and about yourself – that will set you free. But since God is lovingly gentle and not some abusive tyrant who forces himself upon you, to be freed from the enslaving power of those deceptive lies, you must choose to co-operate with God by accepting the truth – even while it feels utterly unreal – and refusing the lies – even though they seem so seductively believable. This is what faith in God is all about – deciding that Almighty God is a more reliable source of truth than your feelings and so choosing to believe what he says, rather than what your feelings say. The Almost Unbelievable Now, as promised, I will briefly expound a few points mentioned earlier, with a view to helping you grapple with some seemingly unbelievable truths. I can write – God’s compassion compels me to – but only you can persist in prayerfully reading. Your self-esteem has been so crushed that it will take you enormous effort for even a small fraction of these truths to sink in, but since, as the proverb says, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, it is important to begin by making every effort to try to absorb the following and doing your utmost to resist the temptation to imagine that you – or anyone else – could somehow nullify the infinity of God’s love. Why I Admire People Tempted to Self-Harm People who feel so tormented that they feel like harming themselves unquestionably deserve deep compassion. More than this, however, they fill me with admiration. Here is one reason: Almost everyone engaged in self-harm sees himself as a loser but in my eyes every such person is not just a winner but a hero. I know how right your negative view of yourself feels to you but, nevertheless, I am certain that my view is the most realistic one. To explain, I’ll quote something I’ve written elsewhere: An athlete, in the midst of a record-breaking run, has never in his life been so fit and strong. Yet his pain-racked body may have never felt so weak. Likewise, in the midst of a spiritual trial, it is not uncommon to be stronger and yet feel weaker than ever before. And to fellow Christians you might seem hopeless. An ultra-marathon champion staggering up the final hill looks pathetic. A child could do better. Anyone not understanding what this man has gone through would shrink from him in disgust. Only someone with all the facts would be awed by his stamina as he stumbles on. Consider Scott and his team, who struggled to the South Pole only to discover their honor of being the first to reach the Pole was lost forever. Amundsen had beaten them by about a month. To add to the futility, they endured further blizzards, illness, frostbite and starvation only to perish; the last three dying just a few miles from safety. Yet today their miserable defeat ending with death in frozen isolation, witnessed by not a living soul, is hailed as one of the greatest ever epics of human exploration and endurance. Every fiber of my being is convinced that their glory is just a shadow of what you can achieve. Though you suffer in isolation and apparent futility, with the depths of your trial known to no one on earth, your name could be blazed in heaven’s lights, honored forever by heaven’s throngs for your epic struggle with illness, bereavement, or whatever. The day is coming when what is endured in secret will be shouted from the housetops. Look at Job: bewildered, maligned, misunderstood; battling not some epic foe but essentially common things - a financial reversal, bereavement, illness; - not cheered on by screaming fans, just booed by some one-time friends. If even on this crazy planet Job is honored today, I can’t imagine the acclaim awaiting you when all is revealed. Your battle with life’s miseries can be as daring as David’s encounter with Goliath. Don’t worry that others don’t understand this at present. One day they will. And that day will never end. Anyone feeling drawn to self-harm is suffering immense inner agony and yet instead of going the cowardly way of suicide he staggers on. That is heroic. Self-harm can be a dire cry for help and desperately craved attention. Such motivation in no way lowers the heroism: the inner pain is just as intense as when it is not a cry for help. Here’s yet another reason for self-harmers capturing my admiration: If you analyze it you will discover that what drives most people to self-harm is distress over their continual failure to reach the standards they believe they should achieve. They are so hard on themselves, however, that they forget that a lesser person would reduce his inner pain by lowering his standards – something self-harmers won’t let themselves do. They continue to maintain their ideals even though it brings them deep torment. How admirable is that! Sadly, self-loathing could have so wounded you that not only this, but much of the following, will initially stagger belief or bounce off as if it did not apply to you. Imagine someone languishing in poverty despite receiving a check for ten million dollars. With the gift seeming too good to be true, he presumed it must be a hoax and never bothered to cash the check. I beg you not to be like that person. Please don’t miss out simply because what the good Lord has done seems too good to be true. Even though God’s standards are terrifyingly higher than ours, anyone thinking himself not good enough is seeing things through human eyes, not divine eyes. Jesus, the eternal Son of God, reaches the Holy Lord’s humanly unattainable standards of absolute perfection. Again, this will seem unbelievable or irrelevant mumbo jumbo without serious grappling with truth and seeking divine revelation. You Are a Sophisticated Being I claw at words trying to describe you. Words like noble, regal, intelligent, important and valuable all fall short. “Priceless” and “irreplaceable” are applicable but still fail to embrace the full magnificence of who you are. You are God-like – and you are not some shabby imitation of God but the Almighty God of Perfection made you with God-like qualities. Genesis 1:27 God created man in his own image. In God's image he created him; male and female he created them. This is solid proof that when the Bible speaks of “man” or “men” in general, it applies with equal force to females as to males. It is so important to God that we grasp this gender issue that he lays it out in the very beginning of the Bible. Moreover, Scripture also implies that God’s nature is most fully reflected not by males alone but by a combination of what is distinctively masculine and what is distinctively feminine. For more, see Gender in the Bible. So, under the inspiration of God himself, Genesis 1:27, is declaring that, without exception, every human is in the image of the divine. Tragically, many children have been so grossly mistreated that they grow up to feel less than human. The devastating feeling of being less than human can be so strong that that degrading feeling can seem to be the truth. No matter how loudly they scream, however, mere feelings cannot change what God pronounces to be true. The truth is that you are fully human, which means you reflect the very nature of God – so much so that Jesus said, “Isn’t it written in your law, ‘I said, you are gods?” (John 10:34). Jesus was referring to this Scripture: Psalms 82:6-7 I said, “You are gods, all of you are sons of the Most High. Nevertheless you shall die like men, and fall like one of the rulers.” In this Word from God, our mortality – a consequence of our fallen nature – is brutally recognized and yet still the Godlike aspects of our nature remain undeniable. Finally, here are two more Scriptures affirming how exalted all humans are: Psalm 139:14 I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. My soul knows that very well. Psalm 8:3-6 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained; what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him? For you have made him a little lower than God, and crowned him with glory and honor. You make him ruler over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet. You Are Not Alone Let’s briefly explore several aspects to the comforting, liberating truth that no matter how alone you feel, you are not alone. There is something devastatingly lonely and isolating about pain. No one but God could slip inside your head and feel your pain. And how you feel just cannot be put into words. Yet we yearn to break the torment of solitary confinement and be understood. We yearn to express the inexpressible. It is a sad fact that because not everyone understands self-harm, some people conclude in their ignorance that self-harm is weird. In reality, you are not alone because almost the entire human race has engaged in some form of self-harm, even if it is just people wounding themselves emotionally by telling themselves they are stupid after doing something that is below their best. For anyone to regard his own form of self-harm as acceptable and think someone else’s is weird is hypocritical. It simply boils down to personal familiarity with certain forms of self-abuse. Not just emotional self-harm but full-on self-injury occurs around the globe in every continent, and probably every culture. A dear friend of mine writes: I have had the honor of talking to many people who have self-harmed. They are of all ages, from all walks of life and from several countries, especially Latin America and Africa. My son has chatted with people from all over Asia who self-harm. Currently, in immigration detention centers all over the world, huge numbers are cutting themselves and self-harming. They have suffered torture, war and crimes in such places as Africa, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. They feel trapped, isolated, oppressed. Their “crime” is wanting to live in a world that apparently does not want them. (Sound familiar? It sure does to me.) They are unwanted anywhere. The country they have fled to does not want them and they might be killed if forced to return to the land they risked their lives to flee from. They feel rejects, unworthy to be alive, and are plagued with nightmarish memories of what drove them to become refugees in the first place. They are among the countless thousands of people who are hurting and feeling deep pain right now. Oppression incites anger. When the anger is unified (in a mass demonstration or a revolution, for example) the whole world takes notice. When it remains confined to individuals, however, the anger and a loss of any sense of justice can intensify even more. Anger cries out for expression. It demands a voice. People all over the world struggle like me to be heard, to be understood, to be free from inner pain. They feel what I feel. If we swapped stories they would say I am okay. They know. Even if we never meet, this connects me to them. I am not alone with this pain after all. They understand. I am one with all the voiceless people out there who are screaming with their own bodies to be understood and allowed to exist like normal people do. I think of an African friend who begged me to understand that she wasn’t worthless. She was smart. She would have been someone, instead of a worthless refugee in a country that doesn’t want her, if only she had not been brought up in a war-torn country. She has terrifying nightmares and she self-harms. She learned that I self-harmed and we talked. We share a secret. We are not alone. We speak to each other. We connect. We have a voice together. It comforts me. More than this, my friend is discovering something amazing flowing from the unique way that her suffering connects her with other hurting people: it empowers her to bring them hope and comfort like no one who has had an easier life can possibly achieve. Her suffering broke God’s heart and was the tragic consequence of living in a world that refuses to imitate God but acts in rebellion against his kind, gentle, loving ways. Nevertheless, that suffering has lifted her to a place of special honor in God’s eyes because it puts her in a unique position to help other suffering people – all of whom are so dear to his heart. To her astonishment, she has discovered that her past anguish, rather than being the useless waste it had once seemed, has immense meaning and value. You Are Totally Known and Understood Earlier we stated the obvious: No one but God could slip inside your head and feel your pain. But guess what! That is exactly what God does! “Laugh, and the world laughs with you, cry, and you cry alone,” can only be true if you leave God out of the equation. And the stupendous news is that we don’t have to leave God out. You are of such astounding importance and value to the Lord of the universe that every minute aspect of your life captivates his attention. He knew you and yearned for your companionship long before you had ever heard of him – before you even gained consciousness, in fact. He cares for you so much that ever since the moment of your conception, God has been with you, observing the multiplication of your every cell as you slowly formed within the womb. Invest time trying to contemplate the overwhelming vastness of the number of grains of sand in a single bucket. Then multiply that by the total amount of sand on every beach on the entire planet and add the grains of sand in every desert. That incomprehensible number is equivalent to the number of thoughts God has had about you. Whether you are asleep or awake, no detail of your life, no matter how hidden and secret or insignificant or embarrassing, past or future will ever escape his intimate awareness. He has known your every thought and he knew every word you would speak before you even uttered it. And this mind-bogglingly intense level of concern for you will keep hurtling on like an unstoppable freight train fuelled by limitless love for all eternity. Add infinite intelligence to this unlimited knowledge and you are totally understood – not just more than any other human can possibly understand you but exceedingly more than you could even hope to understand yourself. In the most intensely intimate, infinitely detailed sense of the word, God knows what you are going through. Keep reading and you will see that your pain matters – so astoundingly so that, rather than luxuriate in ease, the most important Person in the entire cosmos would willingly suffer every trace of your pain for you. The stupendous Lord of the Galaxies, the Source of all beauty, feels for you so immensely that it would actually relieve his distress for him to fully bear your torment himself. You are not alone: even though you are rarely even conscious of it, from the moment of your conception and for the rest of eternity you have the ultimate companion who is infinitely concerned about the tiniest aspects of your life. For biblical confirmation of this, see Psalm 139. God Has Taken Your Pain Upon Himself God is highly personal. He is no machine storing incomprehensibly vast quantities of information. God is love. Infinite love not only cares enough to want to know everything about you; love feels . Your pain and distress sends him reeling in pain. Even imperfect humans can love with such intensity that they would rather suffer themselves than see their loved one suffer. And this is what God has done. Study this: Isaiah 53:4-12 Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering . . . But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought our peace was on him; and by his wounds we are healed. . . . the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . . and stricken for the disobedience of my people . . . you make his soul an offering for sin . . . he will bear their iniquities. . . . yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. It is almost as if the magnitude of the agony God feels in identifying with your distress drove him to self-harm – except that it was so much more than just an emotional reaction; it was the meticulously planned solution for your needs. By identifying with you so utterly that he was tortured to death on your behalf, the eternal Son of God opened the way for your healing and other wonders of immense significance in your life. Now all that it takes is for you to accept it. Just as marriage requires not just love and commitment from one partner, but the other must also agree to the union, so it is with you and God. No matter how much love yearns to help, love refuses to force itself upon another. At whatever personal cost it takes, love restrains itself until the loved one is willing to receive. You Are Valued Beyond Measure To explain, let me quote from something I’ve written elsewhere: A diamond is just a bit of rock. It can’t love, talk, think. Its worth is based not on what it can do but on what people are willing to pay for it. Diamonds are considered of great value simply because people will pay much to have one. You are far more precious to God than tons of diamonds and he paid a far higher price than all the wealth of a million earths to have you as his best friend. You have an irreplaceable place in God’s own heart. He loves you dearly and tenderly and devotedly. He paid the highest possible price – the willing sacrificial death of his holy Son – to have you as his best friend. Types of Self-Harm If you feel pressured to inflict pain or discomfort upon yourself or make yourself miserable, a common response is cutting oneself but the range of possibilities is almost endless. You might, for example, bite yourself, not allow sores to heal by repeatedly picking at them, refuse to relieve yourself until the pain becomes intolerable, or deny yourself needed medical treatment. Eating disorders not only result in self-harm, they are often driven by forces similar to those behind other types of self-harm. It is not always the case, of course, but even overwork or sabotaging relationships that fill you with joy can likewise be a form of self-inflicted pain that this webpage addresses. Irrespective of whether you happen to express your extreme distress in one of the possibilities listed in this page or you are even more creative in your choice of self-affliction, you are by no means a freak, nor are you alone in your distress. Less well-publicized forms of self-harm can seem bizarre and inexplicable even to those hurting themselves. The perplexing behavior suddenly makes sense, however, when the person’s past is revealed. Strange forms of self-abuse often turn out to be re-enactments of sometimes-forgotten childhood abuse. Real-life examples can prove highly illuminating for some sufferers, but for a few people, details might trigger memories they are currently not brave enough to face. In some cases, self-harm originates not from deliberate childhood abuse but from significant people in one’s life inadvertently giving the dangerously wrong impression that you are not quite good enough to be loved. Some people with eating disorders, for example, have gained – sometimes mistakenly – the impression that they are almost at the point of being accepted but they need to do just that bit extra to make it. Although the way they were treated is very mild compared to what abused children have received, they can still find it devastating and feel compelled to go to extremes to try to prove themselves worthy of acceptance. Children’s need for parental love and approval almost rivals their need for oxygen, but even quite good parents can be rather miserly in giving it. It might simply be that the parent – especially common in fathers – is emotionally reserved and has no idea how much he or she is leaving the child with a gnawing ache for parental affection and/or approval. The result is what can feel like an unfillable hole in the child that refuses to diminish even after the child has matured into a capable adult. People suffering this way usually downgrade the significance of having felt love-deprived as a child. They see it as minor, relative to obvious child abuse, but just as malnutrition in childhood can have serious, long-term implications, so can feeling love-starved. An unmet craving for parental approval can not only last a lifetime, it can transmute into a gut-wrenching feeling of inadequacy that produces an endless striving to be “good enough,” or even result in self-loathing. Even highly successful people can stagger through life little moved by world acclaim, but desperately pining for their parents’ approval, and never feeling they can get it. Sometimes an eating disorder, or some other unusual behavior, is a manifestation of this desperate attempt to be “good enough.” The critical factor is not how loved, desirable, successful or capable we really are, but how we suppose we measure up. This, in turn, is usually strongly influenced by the self-image we gained during our most impressionable years – our childhood. In cases of blatant abuse, even more devastating than the inflicted physical pain is the long-lasting psychological wounding. Abusers typically try to ease their own conscience for their shameful acts of cruelty by either forcefully declaring or implying that their victims are useless, or worse. The torment they inflict is so emotionally shattering that it leaves an indelible impression on their victims. Putdowns can have serious implications, however, regardless of whether they come in the form of violent abuse, are solely verbal, or just the rationing of parental love. And regardless of whether the child is correct or mistaken in interpreting it as a putdown. What makes suffering perceived putdowns during one’s childhood particularly devastating is that not only did they occur during one’s impressionable years, those treating the child this way were usually older (and therefore smarter), and hence perceived by the child as reliable, authoritative sources of information. Moreover, abusers often keep their bad behavior behind closed doors and are respected by the community or thought by other family members incapable of doing wrong, thus reinforcing a child’s natural tendency to believe what they say. Tragically, though not surprisingly, these factors combine to leave survivors with the mistaken but powerful impression that they must have deserved the abuse they received. Not only do they feel they deserved their past mistreatment, they are often specifically told, or come to conclude, that they are incurably wicked and so deserve continual punishment. For example, for thirty years after her abuse until she was healed, sexual abuse survivor Christine would cry out in her sleep, “I’m bad, I’m bad, I’m bad . . .” Like many people who practice self-injury, what she had suffered as a child amounts to brainwashing that proved far more powerful than her high intelligence in setting in concrete her feelings about herself. Writes a Christian in her early twenties who finally found Christlike love and acceptance: I believed I was worthless inside and that I had to beat myself up because no one else would take the time to do it like I deserved. Eventually I learned that no one else wanted to beat me up because they didn’t see a need to. Even after I revealed some of my darkest secrets to them, they still loved me. For many, self-harm is combined with masturbation and/or pornography – often mixed with fantasies of being humiliated, terrorized or physically hurt. This is particularly common among sexual abuse survivors, which is hardly surprising since their original suffering was associated with sexual stimulation. The Need to Feel When people receive bad news they are usually left numb with shock. How long this lasts varies, with a key factor being how willing the person is to face the reality and full implications of the news. When someone has been traumatized, this numbness lasts indefinitely if the person is unwilling to face the full reality of what happened. People can be so determined not to let themselves feel the natural horror, grief and anger that such an experience produces that they become disconnected from their feelings. An added reason for this happening is that some people believe that anger, hate and bitterness are wrong. Some even feel condemned over experiencing deep sorrow. So, rather than resolve such feelings, many people keep suppressing the feelings, refusing to admit to themselves that these feelings/attitudes are boiling just below the surface. It’s like having cancer and supposing that if you stoically refuse to think about it, the cancer will magically disappear. Just as removing from our consciousness an unhealed part of our body does not cause it to heal, neither does removing unresolved issues from our consciousness cause them to become resolved. This denial of one’s true feelings produces a numbness so unnatural and disconcerting that many people feel driven to inflict pain on themselves simply to give them something they can feel. Pain feels a particularly appropriate choice to them because deep down they know they should be feeling and expressing their pain over past suffering that still haunts them because it remains unresolved. Inner pain is just as real, agonizing and debilitating as physical pain, and yet it seems vague, mysterious and hidden. Physical pain is less complicated, more understandable and psychologically easier to handle. When we have inflicted physical pain upon ourselves, the reason for the pain is obvious, but with inner pain most of us cannot understand why we are so distressed. We typically tell ourselves, “That happened years ago, I should be over it now,” and/or “Others have suffered far worse horrors.” We are particularly likely to underrate the severity of our inner distress if we keep pushing the memory away and refuse to truly examine the extent of what we suffered. It is like a wound that will never heal because we refuse to admit that it needs to be treated. A rewarding feature of self-inflicted pain – what keeps us repeating it – is that it provides a more intelligible reason for us being in pain and can temporarily distract us from the reality of our inner suffering. The real reason for our inner pain often remains buried because we are too scared to face it, and while it remains largely unexplored, the pain it produces remains largely inexplicable to us. Mysterious Inner Pain An emotional wound – the aftermath of a long-passed trauma, for example – is very real. Despite its intensity, however, there is much about inner pain that is frustratingly vague, undefined and hidden. And the mystery is further confounded by most of us trying to cope with the anguish by suppressing memories, refusing to think about it, and so on. In stark contrast, there is nothing complex or bewildering about a flesh wound. No one thinks you are weird for feeling pain when you are bleeding. No one says, “You should be over it by now,” when they see a gaping wound. When there is an obvious physical cause, the pain makes sense. We can be driven to self-harm by the thought that if we are going to be in pain anyhow it might as well be pain that has an obvious cause and is easily defined and understood. Physical pain offers a moment’s respite from the frustratingly difficult to understand inner agony. The anguish within seems inexplicable and yet we still yearn to define it and explain it, not just to others but to ourselves. As already mentioned, this need sets us apart from sub-humans. Refusing to think about the cause of inner pain, rather than being as macho as we might try to fool ourselves into believing, is contrary to our very humanity. It dehumanizes us and does nothing to end the pain. If you have a huge splinter in your foot, trying not to think about the pain or stabbing yourself elsewhere to divert the pain will not end your pain. You cannot hope to be free from pain until you investigate the cause, face the fact that you have a splinter and then remove it. Inner pain might not be as simple but with the help of a counsellor you can do the equivalent and finally find peace. Later in this webpage we will discover solutions to these dilemmas that haunt and stymie us. Further Reasons for Self-Inflicted Pain There are understandable reasons for people hurting themselves by what at first seems bizarre behavior. One man would pay to get raped and treated vilely in order to reinforce to himself that he was despicable and unlovable. How could anyone find such suffering rewarding? He, like many others who engage in quite different forms of degradation and self-inflicted pain, did it to keep killing his hope of being lovable. Yes, crushing his hope filled him with despair but he considered it worth the physical pain and feelings of hopelessness because he saw the relinquishing of all hope as self-protection. He believed he was protecting himself from suffering ever again from the agony of dashed hopes. Some people do such things as cut themselves, overeat, dress drably or neglect personal hygiene to kill hope. By creating good reason to expect to be rejected, they are not caught off guard or bitterly disappointed when rejection comes. Others engage in the same behavior to repel people because they fear attracting an abuser. Many, of course, are moved by both factors. Self-abuse is often an attempt to protect oneself from what are essentially the minor risks of life – such as the possibility of attracting sexual assault by dressing normally – but to the person, these unlikely dangers seem highly likely. As far as general population is concerned, their view is statistically distorted, but it is statistically significant in terms of how often it occurred in the person’s own experience. To enjoy life in all its richness, these people need to learn to trust again. In this webpage we will look at how this can happen. People who have suffered sexual abuse often combine masturbation with ugly fantasies in order to ensure that they remain totally turned off sex. They do this to protect themselves from the possibility of their sex drive or longing for love pushing them into a relationship that could end up hurting them. For some, the inner pain and deep distress within them erupts in the form of inexplicable anger or intense frustration, that might be expressed as self-mutilation or some violent act upon themselves. Some dear people see self-harm as the only alternative to expelling their pent up feelings upon other people. They fear that if they don’t physically hurt themselves they will physically hurt someone else. A girl was determined to keep her inner pain secret. By keeping herself injured she would always have something physical to point to if anyone caught her crying and wondered why she was upset. As she matured into a woman, that specific motivation for self-harm faded but it had helped to establish the habit. As she grew, other motives, such as an expression of her hatred of herself, then took over. Someone filled with pent up anger and frustration might slam a table or even a wall with his fist, thus hurting himself. His aim is not to hurt himself but to release the explosive mix of feelings erupting within him. It is not a carefully thought-out plan; it is a barely-controllable reaction to extreme pressure. Here is a variation on this: a child, enraged by the horrific abuse meted out on him, filled with an explosive yearning to violently retaliate against his abuser but the adult’s far superior strength made that impossible. The only option allowed him to express his irresistible craving for violent revenge was to direct it toward himself. This became a habit that lasted long into his adult life. Tragically, even if hurting oneself momentarily reduces some of the pressure, it is not merely a poor way of coping with inner turmoil, it actually magnifies the problem because by deliberately hurting yourself you become your own enemy, with you 24/7. Such examples vividly demonstrate the adage that unforgiveness usually hurts us more than it hurts the other person. On the other hand, what passes as forgiveness is often little more than cowardly truth-avoidance – an escapist attempt to live in denial of the reality that we have truly suffered grave injustice and that he deserves to be punished. As I explain in webpages on forgiveness, fully facing up to the gravity of what was done to us is an essential step on the path to genuine forgiveness. In our brief overview we have by no means exhausted all possible reasons for self-inflicted pain or injury. What is particularly bewildering to many of us is that the exact cause of our distress can be so suppressed that we have no idea what is causing these intense feelings. The all-knowing Lord knows all the factors involved and as you keep seeking him for answers he will reveal them so that you can heal. A Life Transformed The truth that will heal you is so mind-boggling that I must reveal it carefully and gradually lest you think I am out of my mind. Let me start by proving that no matter how ridiculous they initially seem, these healing principles really work. I’ll do this by sharing with you Christine’s story. Past sexual abuse featured strongly in her torment. The source of your distress might be very different, but the secret of Christine’s transformation applies to us all. A key factor in Christine being freed from self-harm was the realization that she was innocent. The first thing she grasped through reading my webpages was that feeling pleasure when being sexually abused is a normal bodily reaction, not a moral issue. Just as feeling pain is an unavoidable response to being severely beaten, so is feeling pleasure an unavoidable response to being forcibly, but sensually, molested. That’s a helpful insight that almost any counselor could have provided, but then she discovered something far more powerful. Let’s read her story: I expect I’ll remember till my dying day exactly where I was standing when the truth exploded within me and set me free. I was on my cell phone talking to Grantley (writer of this webpage), thanking him for his webpages that explain that the sexual pleasure inflicted on me by my childhood abuser was not my fault. I was thrilled to finally realize that my sexual feelings were an involuntary reaction to the abuse and in no way suggest immorality on my part. I could sense that Grantley was hesitant; wanting to agree with me, but sounding as if I had missed something vital. “What if you hadn’t been so innocent?” he asked. “Would you then be doomed to live with crippling guilt for the rest of your life?” Grantley had studied to be a psychologist but after graduating with honors he abandoned the field because he had found a way of healing that has far more power than psychology offers. He began to remind me of an ancient spiritual truth that has transformed the lives of countless millions. Suddenly I realized the ultimate in liberating truths: I don’t have to try to justify myself because God has justified me! The Judge of all humanity sees me as not merely no worse than average people; he sees me as spotlessly pure and perfect, just like his holy Son. This might at first seem uncomfortably religious but hold on while I explain how it transformed my life. On the cross, the Innocent One swapped places with me; suffering my humiliation so that I could gain his endless honor and, to use the astounding expression the Bible uses, he has made me “the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). I had been aware of the truth before but now it hit me like a divine revelation. Suddenly Christ’s sacrifice became the most beautiful act ever made. I am fully accepted by the Judge of all humanity, the greatest intellect and highest moral authority in the universe, and since it was all finalized and sealed two thousand years ago, there is nothing I can do to mess it up. All I need do is cling to Jesus and bask in the wonder of what he has done for me and enjoy all the benefits. I am not just as good as most people but, in heaven’s eyes, I’m as pure and holy as God, because of Jesus – and I’m sharing this because it can be just as powerfully your experience as mine. It’s so mind-blowing that I’ve had to keep repeating the Scripture over and over to myself: 2 Corinthians 5:21 For him [Jesus] who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Until making this discovery, whenever anyone criticized me I would go into a tailspin; not only inwardly agreeing with the putdown but telling myself that I’m incurably wicked and deserve to be treated as dirt and ruthlessly punished. Quickly, the oppressive feeling would balloon until it was so overwhelming that I felt compelled to hurt myself (usually by cutting myself). After that, I’d feel so miserable that I’d be pressured to masturbate in a vain attempt to comfort myself. Now, everything has changed! Is Christine Out of Her Mind? I interrupt Christine to admit that what she has been saying initially seems not merely ridiculous but downright impossible. To help you grasp a difficult concept would you mind letting your imagination run wild for a few moments before returning to cold reality? Suppose you had amnesia. After forgetting all of your past, snippets of memories are slowly returning. Eventually some of the jigsaw pieces slot together and to your horror you realize that in your past you had committed a hideous crime. For weeks you are petrified day and night that someone will find out and you’ll be jailed for life. Finally, you can bear the mental torment no longer. You turn yourself in to the police and confess. They confirm that you have correctly remembered part of your past. They inform you, however, that there are still parts you have forgotten. Years ago, you had been arrested and tried for that crime. You were given a surprisingly light sentence and you have already served the time. Imagine how relieved you would feel! Now let’s plunge back into icy reality. What has happened to you is similar, but even more amazing. You are horrified by snippets of your past that you recall. It is nightmare material. You have been hurting yourself because you suppose you have not suffered enough, but what has been wiped from your consciousness is that there is a mysterious but very real sense in which you have already suffered for the past far, far more than you realize – so immensely, in fact, that every bit of punishment you deserve has been paid in full and you are now completely free. Now here comes the part that seems utterly ridiculous: you have already paid the full penalty because Jesus was tortured to death for your past, totally absorbing within himself all your shame, pain and blame until not a shred remained. “You’re mad!” you object, “Perhaps it somehow transformed Christine but no matter how kind Jesus might have been, and no matter what he did, he’s not me. What he did is largely irrelevant.” I have to admit that you are right – if Jesus were an ordinary person. What he achieved makes no sense until we realize that Jesus is not just a spectacularly special man, nor even the world’s greatest ever miracle worker; he is divine. With him, nothing is impossible. He is supernatural and he longs to give you the most profound supernatural experience imaginable – a supernatural union in which you and he merge with each other, melting into one so that, as the Bible declares, he is in you and you are in him. Since Jesus is no abuser, he seeks your full consent before proceeding, but he is so devoted to your lifelong well-being and eternal happiness that he wants to bond with you so that you and he are inseparable. When this happens, both of you have the same spiritual bank account, the same status, the same spiritual genes, the same past (that’s why he suffered) and the same future (that’s why your future is unbelievably bright). For Scriptures about the amazing oneness with Christ that he wants you to enjoy, see One With Christ. Even though we Christians tend to understate it, this staggering miracle makes you a totally new being, complete with supernatural powers and immortality. Marriage makes a man and woman one flesh, with pooled assets and a shared destiny. Eventually their very genes permanently unite to form offspring. As this marvel commences with a few spoken words in a marriage ceremony, so a few words in a heart-felt prayer can usher in the spiritual transformation in which you and the spotlessly pure, eternal Son of God become one, with the same past and the same future. (For more about how you can experience this, see You Can Find Love. ) Often we hurt ourselves because we believe our stupidity or wickedness needs to be punished, but every trace of it has already been fully punished – with inhuman severity – when Jesus took upon himself all our imbecile goof-ups and depravity and was tortured to death for them. All the punishment was exhausted on him. There is nothing left. When you are in spiritual union with the holy Son of God, you both have the same past. What happened to Jesus happened to you, and what happened to you happened to Jesus. Do you think you need to be cut or deserve to be whipped or beaten? His skin was flayed to shreds. Think you need to bleed? All the blood was drained from his body. Think you should suffer? His agony was indescribable. Think you should die? It’s impossible to be deader than his corpse. And because it happened to him, it has already happened to you. When you and he are one, for you to punish yourself is utterly needless. The person who did things worthy of punishment is not only dead and buried, he died almost two thousand years ago. Let me plunder a piece of fiction I wrote years ago: In my mind’s eye I saw myself charging into a burning building to rescue someone I loved more than life itself. Every movement began to slow down. Shielding her body, I suffer horrific burns to carry her to safety, where I collapse, writhing in agony. But it is worth every throb of pain because the love of my life is completely untouched by the fire. All that matters is that she’s unharmed. Seeing my wounds she says, “I don’t deserve such love!” I look on in horror as, overwhelmed by a feeling of unworthiness, she then runs back into the fire and kills herself; breaking my heart by her death and rendering all my suffering an utter waste. I had been on the brink of treating my heroic Savior like that. How dare I let Jesus’ agony be wasted! If I beat myself, Jesus was beaten for nothing. If I get angry with myself, Jesus bore God’s wrath for nothing. If I let shame overwhelm me, Jesus was humiliated for nothing. If I think of myself as morally defiled, the Innocent One was treated as a criminal for nothing. If I think I’m inferior, the King of kings was treated as dirt for nothing. The Lord of all suffered horrifically to give me the right of access to all God’s riches. For his sake, I must refuse to throw aside such a costly sacrifice. For some reason – sheer love I guess – he considered me worth it. I won’t let him down. No matter what false feelings flood over me, I’ll refuse to believe them. I’ll enjoy life for his sake. “FOR HIS SAKE!” I yelled. At last I found peace. “Yes, for Jesus’ sake!” I shouted in joyous relief, “For the sake of the One who died for me!” By thinking of myself as unworthy, I was seeing myself as I truly would be had Jesus never hung upon the cross for me. But he was crucified. He was tortured to death to swap my sin for his sinlessness. He took my guilt and gave me his innocence. And here I was on the brink of pushing it aside and, by caving into feelings of inferiority, reducing to a senseless waste his agonizing death for me. Some children are beaten under the guise of the punishment making them good. Some carry that thought into adulthood. But for us to be punished doesn’t make us good. What makes us good is Jesus being so fully punished on our account that there is no punishment left. And in exchange for him taking our humiliation, idiotic mistakes and evil upon himself, he gives us his moral perfection and dignity. Christ’s nature and achievements are so much ours that Scripture states such things as: John 17:22 The glory which you have given me . . . 1 Corinthians 1:30  . . . you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption 1 Corinthians 2:16  . . . we have Christ’s mind. 2 Peter 1:4  . . . he has granted to us his precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature . . . He became human so that divinity could flow through you. The Eternal died so that you could be more alive than ever before; took on your mortality to give you immortality. He wore your limitations so you could enjoy his infinity. The Almighty crumbled with your weakness to give you supernatural strength. The Pride of the universe agonized with your loneliness so that you would never be alone again; suffered your isolation so that you and he could be inseparable. The King of kings bore your shame and darkness so that you could be radiant with his honor; was humiliated with your depravity to infuse you with his holy majesty; lowered himself to the dust of death so that you could be enthroned with him in highest heaven. God’s noble Son shamed himself with your foolishness to give you his intellect; exchanging your dirty, cloudy thinking for his crystal purity; suffering for your idiotic blunders so that you could be dignified as a superior being, graced with divine wisdom. He let your sorrow crush him to let you beam with his joy; was impoverished by your debts so that you could revel in his riches. He absorbed within himself all your inadequacies so that you could overflow with his abundance. Through your union with the holy King of kings, every trace of filth has been flushed out by a torrent of divine purity; all your guilt replaced by pristine innocence; all your shame by royal dignity; all your ugliness transformed into dazzling beauty. You are exalted to the very heavens as someone worthy of eternal honor. Who could punish such a person? What makes it hardest for us to believe that we can enjoy this holy union that frees us from the pain, blame and shame of our past is that we know we don’t deserve it. “Why would God suffer such agony to lavish his goodness upon me ?” we ask in utter bewilderment. The answer is that it is God’s very nature to do such things. He is a giver, not a taker. There is more that is mind boggling about him than the incomprehensible immensity of his physical power and intellect. God doesn’t just love us sometimes, he is love – overwhelmingly powerful, pure, selfless love that refuses to give up or count the cost. I am reluctant to use the “L” word when talking about God. Too few people understand that genuine love has nothing to do with lust. Even those not using the word to con and exploit and hurt people, tend to use it as an excuse to seek their own happiness and pamper their egos. With so many people misusing the word, the true meaning drains away and it mutates into something hideous. True love is so exquisitely beautiful and rare that you might not have witnessed even a shadow of it in humanity. Divine love is selfless giving taken to extreme levels. It is pure, nonsexual, humble, self-sacrificing and wants nothing but the other person’s greatest good. This rare beauty overwhelms God’s heart and flows freely to us all. He gives and gives and gives, not because of anything in us, but because of his goodness. He is so filled, driven and intoxicated by unlimited kindness, generosity, gentleness and purity that it is impossible for him to stop wanting to give you the best in his uniquely glorious, selfless, holy way. This is hard for us to believe because it is so contrary to our experience with humans. But God is utterly different to frail humanity. He knows no human inadequacies, selfishness or lust. He is kind, warm and gentle, yet all-powerful and flawless. His motives are pure. Now let’s return to Christine: Grantley taught me how to gain maximum benefit from my new understanding of how loved and accepted I am by God. I can now stop myself from spiraling out of control. I can pull myself out of a nose dive the instant it begins. Here’s how it works: the moment I sense myself beginning to feel negative about myself I inwardly shout, “No, that’s not true!” and begin thanking God that because of Jesus, God accepts me and believes in me. The Perfect One thinks I’m important, declares me to be good and pure and righteous, and has wonderful plans for my life. On and on I go, reminding myself of how loved by God I am; thanking and praising Jesus for being punished so that I need never punish myself, and rejoicing in all of God’s goodness to me. As I continue, savoring the implications of the cleansing that is mine through Christ, and of me being royalty – a child of the King of kings – my spirit soars to the point where the urge to hurt myself fades and I feel no need to seek empty comfort by degrading myself by masturbating. Just as bad habits are hard to break, good habits are hard to build. It’s been hard to keep remembering each time I begin to enter a downward spiral to pull myself up, tell myself, “No, that’s not true!” and begin thanking God for the way he sees me through rose-colored glasses – through the precious blood of Jesus drained for me. And it’s been hard dredging up a multitude of positive things about God’s view of me to keep thanking God for, and to keep praise flowing for long enough for my depressing thoughts to fade. But as I keep persisting, it is getting easier and easier, and I’m discovering that, once established, good habits grow strong and serve us well. I’ve also learned to, as it were, put money in the bank for a rainy day. Even when things are going well I regularly rehearse uplifting Scriptures and savor God’s love. Then when oppressive thoughts cloud in, I have in my mind a ready store of positive material to recall that will enrich my thinking. Gradually, to think well of myself – seeing myself through God’s eyes – is becoming second nature to me. As a result, self-harm and degrading myself by having sex with myself and ugly fantasies are quickly becoming a thing of the past. Moreover, life is becoming more exciting than ever before. Christ’s sacrifice is my anchor. No matter how violently stormy seas bounce me around, I’m safe because the anchor of my soul is embedded in the immovable, two-thousand-year-old bedrock of the holy Son of God swapping places with me. Christ has made me acceptable and lovable. It was settled two thousand years ago and nothing can change it. Cutting Oneself Mentioned in Bible? It was the showdown: Elijah versus 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah (1 Kings 18:19). Whose God was more powerful? The Baal devotees prayed. No response. They prayed some more – and more and more. Still no response. Things were getting desperate. They used their ultimate weapon in getting their god to respond: 1 Kings 18:28-29 They cried aloud, and cut themselves in their way with knives and lances, until the blood gushed out on them. When midday was past, they prophesied until the time of the evening offering; but there was no voice, no answer, and nobody paid attention. We can be strongly tempted to act like them; thinking that God or loved ones might take pity on us if we afflict ourselves enough or make ourselves sufficiently miserable. But God’s heart is already breaking over your distress. The last thing the loving, tender Lord wants is for you to further increase your suffering. In the Bible, those who cut themselves were pagans who did not understand the heart of God. The emphatic teaching of Jesus is that faith is the key to answered prayer and to moving the hand of God. That makes praising God explosively powerful because praise is faith so purified and concentrated as to reduce problems to dust. Praising and thanking God are not reserved for when things go well. They form a lethal spiritual weapon against everything that seeks to distress, depress or destroy us. Ephesians 5:20 giving thanks always concerning all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . Philippians 4:6 In nothing be anxious, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving , let your requests be made known to God. Colossians 3:17 Whatever you do, in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father, through him. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus toward you. Hebrews 13:15 Through him, then, let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually  . . . (Emphasis mine) This is what Christine was working on. Her automatic, unthinking response to distress had been to stab or cut herself. Now she is establishing a new way of responding. This new habit, instead of acting like a drug that brings temporary relief but actually worsens the situation, is healing her inner pain, and dissipating her distress. Instead of begging God to intervene, she puts running shoes on her faith by thanking and praising God for loving and purifying and beautifying and exalting her. When feeling down, thanking and praising God is as hard as dragging yourself out of a cozy bed on an icy morning, but despite the effort it takes, you soon discover that praising God transports you from frigid depression to the cheery warmth of victory over defeatism. Louise, who often suffers deep depression, wrote a beautiful poem about a shoot pushing through a seed until finally emerging into the sunshine, only to be hit by the stench of fertilizer. That fertilizer, however, causes it to grow. Gradually the stench disappears and the plant blooms, producing a beautiful fragrance. “Beauty comes at a price,” says her poem, which I suggest you read. In a personal e-mail to me, Louise made a comment about the poem. I’m reluctant to share it because of the language but it will be very meaningful to many readers: I keep saying, I am a piece of ----, but I am not. I am, however, covered with it from time to time in order to grow, to push up through it and be strengthened by it. Practical Help Anyone wrestling with self-harm is in a uniquely stressful dilemma. In any violent act, to be the victim is traumatic. It is even traumatic to be the attacker, since the attacker must act contrary to good conscience. But in self-harm, you are both the victim and the offender. How traumatic is that! How can you flee from your enemy when you are your own enemy? How can you get any joy out of the defeat of your enemy when you are that enemy? Forgiving oneself is a critical ingredient of feeling good about oneself and ending self-harm. Over the years, very many hurting people have shared their secrets with me. Their experiences have rammed home to me that forgiving oneself, feeling forgiven by God, and forgiving other people, travel together. They might separate a little, but progress with one type of forgiveness moves the others forward; holding back with one, holds back the others. So here’s a practical tip of great importance in ending self-harm: when, despite your best efforts, you seem to have reached a stalemate with one type of forgiveness, try working on one or both of the other types. Each type of forgiveness can be exceedingly stubborn but as you keep working on all three, while looking to God for supernatural help, one of the three will eventually move a little and this will make progress on the others a little easier. Since they are travel mates, each type of forgiveness is critical to feeling good about yourself and hence reducing the pressure to harm yourself. We dare not neglect any of the three types of forgiveness, so let’s list them one final time: * feeling/believing you are forgiven by God * forgiving yourself * forgiving other people Becoming Whole Near the beginning of this webpage we mentioned that people could feel unnaturally numb through being too scared or proud to connect with their true feelings about past traumas. This paralyzing reluctance to connect is highly understandable but gnaws away at a person. In an attempt to break the numbness and feel something akin to the magnitude of what they sense they should be feeling, many of these people inflict physical pain on themselves. After all, physical pain is less complicated, more understandable and psychologically easier to handle than the things that are really troubling them. We can kid ourselves that burying or hiding past difficulties proves us to be the “strong silent type” but the truth is very different. It prevents us from emotionally connecting and coming to terms with what is really troubling us. It can keep us perpetually distressed; one possible manifestation of which can be self-harm. Acting this way can not only cause enormous problems, it is inconsistent with the Healing Lord’s ways. The God of truth says such things as: Proverbs 28:13 He who conceals his sins doesn’t prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy. James 5:16 Confess your offenses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. . . . 1 Chronicles 28:9  . . . for the Lord searches all hearts, and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts. . . . Psalms 44:21  . . . he knows the secrets of the heart. 1 Corinthians 4:5  . . . the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Hebrews 4:13 There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. This is not scary because, as stated in Proverbs 28 (quoted above), even when sin is involved, it is only the person who conceals it who has cause for alarm. Like air into a vacuum, divine mercy and forgiveness rush in to fill whoever admits to sin and genuinely wants to be free from it. The beautiful thing is that we never have to revisit the dark places alone. We can take with us a warm Friend who dispels darkness. He is the Light of the world. We don’t have to fear our emotions because we have a God who deeply understands and empathizes. Jesus himself prayed “with strong crying and tears” (Hebrews 5:7). Elsewhere it says about Jesus: Hebrews 4:15-18 For we don’t have a high priest who can’t be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore draw near with boldness to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy, and may find grace for help in time of need. We don’t have to fear our emotions getting out of control, because he will carefully monitor them. He will not allow us to suffer what we cannot bear (1 Corinthians 10:13). And if we have anger, bitterness or hate, he does not condemn but freely forgives and cleanses, and empowers us to resolve destructive attitudes so that we can heal. Breakthrough I have a down-to-earth prayer that could change your life. I’m not asking you to pray it. Simply read it. If you find it expresses your heart, you could then turn it into a prayer by reading it to God. Dear God, Could it really be that you are gentle and loving toward me? It seems too good to be true. I’ve loathed myself more times than I can count and I’ve assumed you felt like I do about myself. Could it really be that you see me so differently and are eager to warmly embrace me with your forgiveness and approving smile? You are an infinite God, so I concede that you have infinite love. That has to mean that your love far exceeds my own. But you are terrifyingly holy. How could you be less judgmental toward my failings than I am? Could Jesus dying for my sins have made that much difference? Could it really be that at last the pressure is off and I can bask in the sunshine of Almighty God knowing all about me and yet fully accepting me as his precious child? Could I be like Saint Paul, who saw himself as the worst of sinners and yet be special to God? Like that man of God, could I say, “ . . . but what I hate, that I do. . . . that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing. . . . the evil which I don’t desire, that I practice. . . . What a wretched man I am! . . .” and then immediately follow that pathetic lamentation with, “I thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! . . . There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 7:15,18,19,24,25; 8:1)? I need more than fire insurance against hell. To live with myself I need somehow to be able to see myself as being of immense value and morally good. Is this possible for me? You have given your word that if I confess my sins, you will cleanse me from all unrighteousness, and in that same promise you vow you will do this not because I reach some arbitrary standard (we’ve all fallen short, anyhow – Romans 3:23) but simply because you are faithful and just (1 John 1:9). It would be so wonderful to be cleansed. According to the Scripture just mentioned, you and I both have a role to play in bringing this about. You have to be faithful and just; I have to confess my failings. I don’t have to ask you to do your part. Since you are perfect and good, you’ll never be anything but faithful and just. So I’ll do my part and confess to all the things that make me feel so awful– what I’ve done and even what has been done to me that devastates me. I’d prefer to bury the past and live in denial, but the truth is that the past still eats at me, no matter how much I try to suppress it. My sins and the acts of those who have sinned against me seem too disgusting for you to want to hear about them, and yet you are so interested in everything that hurts me that you ask me to confess them – to tell you about them. I don’t find this easy, but I’ve already prolonged my torment for far too long. I need to get this over and done with, so here goes . . . [I suggest you now share your heart with God, pouring out to him details of all the things that tend to make you feel guilty, ashamed or uncomfortable. You might find it helpful to write it out as a letter to God. Any moral means of expressing your heart to God touches him deeply.] Jesus was tortured to death to secure my forgiveness and yet here I am still torturing myself and at times wishing I were dead, as if I were unforgivable, when Jesus sealed my forgiveness two thousand years ago. Forgiveness certainly isn’t my strong point. I remember when Saul, who later become the great apostle Paul, was still hating and scheming to hurt Christians, the risen Lord suddenly appeared and said, “It is hard for you to kick against the goads” (Acts 26:14). I’m told the picture is of an ox angrily kicking against a spike. Every time the ox kicks, he hurts only himself. Have I been like that? Am I hurting myself every time I inwardly lash out in anger or unforgiveness against you or against those who have hurt me? I recall the Lord’s prayer: “Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” Could it be that my difficulty in believing that my sins have been divinely forgiven – supernaturally wiped out – is connected to my reluctance to forgive those who have sinned against me? I wish Jesus hadn’t kept linking me receiving the forgiveness I crave with me forgiving others. How can I forgive anyone else when I find it so hard to forgive myself? And yet somehow these different types of forgiveness are inseparably bound, like different facets on the same diamond. I desperately need to forgive myself and to enjoy your forgiveness, so by an act of will, whether I feel like or it not, I activate the remaining aspect of forgiveness. I choose to forgive all who have hurt me. I don’t excuse what they did, nor pretend that what they did was even slightly defensible, but nevertheless, I forgive, just as I want you to forgive me. “The saying is faithful and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” said Saint Paul (1 Timothy 1:15). He did some atrocious things, including torturing innocent Christians in the hope of forcing them to blaspheme the One who died for their salvation and turn their back on their Savior. Even if I were a thousand times worse than I’ve ever imagined, however, it cannot change the fact that Jesus died for the full forgiveness of the very worst of sinners – whoever that might be. So forgiveness is mine through Jesus swapping places with me on the cross and letting himself be shamed and violated so that I could be honored. I exchange my need to be punished for the fact that he was punished for me. I gladly remove my filthy, sin-stained clothes that fill me with shame. Here they are, Lord: I hand you my guilt and condemnation, placing it upon the bleeding body of my Savior and trade my shame for your forgiveness and the divine purity and honor that it brings. I swap my dirty rags, I put on Jesus’ robe of righteousness. Your forgiveness clothes me from head to toe. I accept you as Lord, and now, through the supernatural transformation you promise, I am born of you. As your Word boldly declares, I am your righteousness because of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). Now we belong to each other. We are one. No matter how atrocious my failings and how much they haunt me, the truth is that in God’s eyes all of us have messed up so badly that Jesus had to suffer a torturous death for us all. The degree of sin isn’t the issue. Without Christ, we are all in the same hopeless predicament, doomed to hell, but no matter how alone and hopeless I often feel, the truth is that I am not without Christ. As Jesus took upon himself my gross inadequacies and shame, I take upon myself his sinlessness and glory. Your righteousness is now my righteousness and your honor is my honor. From now on I will live for you and honor you just as you devote yourself to me and shower me with your honor. I don’t need to punish myself for anything because Jesus has already been punished for it. That’s so mind-boggling that I need to repeat it: the Person who will judge all humanity volunteered to be punished so that I would have no need to be punished – neither punished by God nor by me. Help me grasp the full implications so that this becomes not mere doctrine but life-changing reality. You pronounce me to be a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:21) – an excitingly new divine masterpiece, a work of art crafted by the Master himself. No matter what I see in the mirror, you, the Almighty Lord, declare me to be a totally new person, sparkling with the glory of God; nothing like what I used to be or how I used to see myself. I admit that I don’t feel like a new creature – in fact, I feel as bad as ever – but you don’t lie. I look at myself and see nothing new. I still don’t like what I see. But you say that those whom you declare to be good – your royal children – walk by faith not sight. So I need to believe you, and so believe I am different, no matter what I feel. I am one with Jesus, the holy Son of God, so all the pressure to be good enough, all the humiliation of my past, and all the fear of rejection is over. I want to honor you by breaking out of my former pattern of thinking. Like breaking any habit, it will be hard work but I will do my utmost to act like Christine, so that every time I catch myself beginning to think poorly of myself I will say, “No, that’s not true!” and start thanking you for who I am in your loving eyes. Thank you that although you require my full cooperation, me thinking this way is important to you because you are selflessly devoted to wanting the best for me. Physical Ways of Finding Relief and Comfort Until the healing process takes full effect, however, you can benefit from practical alternatives to self-harm. So we will begin with this and then move on to deeper, longer lasting solutions. Self-harm can seem to offer slight relief but there are many downsides. For example, one friend shared that although self-harm temporarily acted as a diversion, distracting her mind from other pressures, she was left having to cope for days with the soreness of the cuts and the embarrassment of having to dress differently to cover up her wounds. The biggest downside, however, is that self-harm is degrading and lowers even further one’s self-esteem by turning yourself into your own enemy. Consider how you would have every right to be outraged if someone deliberately hurt you physically. It would be a criminal act. To hurt yourself is akin to becoming your own enemy. A dear friend – I’ll call her Emma – told me how, many years ago as a teen, she used to suffer overwhelmingly dark feelings. She found that self-harm brought temporary relief because it externalized inner anguish; affirming that it was real and excruciating and that it truly mattered (and therefore she mattered). The downside, however, is that it achieved this at the huge cost of her not just physically attacking and abusing herself but psychologically harming herself. Bitter experience taught her that self-harm is actually sending oneself a depressingly wrong message. Hurting yourself reinforces the insidious lie that you are worthless, that you don’t matter, that you don’t deserve respect and kindness and that it is right for you to be brutalized and inflicted with pain. Feeling that way about oneself is the last thing anyone needs – especially when already feeling devastatingly low. It mocks and condemns you and ends up further intensifying the inner pain. Knowing no alternative, however, whenever the anguish grew unbearable she grew desperate for the quick fix self-harm offered, even if it ended in a downer. One day, Emma was riddled with an overpowering need to alleviate her distress by physically hurting herself but she could not because her abusers were present. Self-harming in front of them would have incited them to oppress her even more. In desperation, she prayed for a solution. The Lord told her to record her feelings on paper. “But I can’t!” she protested. “They’ll read what I’ve written.” “Use symbols,” replied God. “They know you often doodle. Only you and I will know what the squiggles mean.” She tried it. It worked. She was able to express her deep feelings, and her abusers had no idea what she was doing. Moreover, unlike self-harm, there was no downside. She had avoided the emotional devastation of having sided with her abusers and turned against herself by attacking her body. Once she experienced the benefits, my friend developed the idea. She identified twenty-four different feelings and invented a symbol for each of them. Like me, you might be staggered by that number but producing such a list is easier than I expected. I suggest you develop your own list. For some ideas that might help you start your own, see Starter. Emma found a blank book that she turned into an emotional diary. She would date it and use the symbols to record her feelings. On each occasion, she would keep repeating the appropriate symbols until the oppressive feelings lessened enough to be more manageable. By this means she was expressing the inner pain; releasing it, instead of continually stuffing it inside where it remains vague and indefinable but remains frustrating and agonizing and keeps intensifying. She chose a thick book because she had much to record but when she was away from home, she would carry a smaller notebook with her, use it as necessary, and later transfer the contents into the larger book. That way, Emma had a record as permanent as a scar of how she had felt, but without sending her on the downer that self-harm inevitably leads to. At any time she wished, she could review her diary and see how she was now faring, relative to other occasions. Self-harm can quickly become an enslaving habit – an automatic response to intense inner pain – and like all habits, it will take considerable effort to break it. Our thoughts and beliefs drive us. The critical factor is not what we merely say we believe but what we truly believe in the deepest realms of our being. It is a long process getting new beliefs to stay deep within us so that they completely displace the mistaken beliefs we have harbored for years about God, ourselves and other people. To win a war, it is vital to seize times of relative peace as opportunities to prepare for attacks by making weapons, building defenses, developing strategies, boosting morale and so on. Likewise, to be able to bask in the fulfillment of breaking a powerful habit one must make the most of moments when the pressure is less intense by using them as times to prepare for future attacks. A friend of mine – I’ll call her Anne – who has had many personal battles with self-harm suggested the keeping of what we might call a Comfort Box or an Emergency Kit. In it she keeps things that help her cope with inner distress. As you make this idea your own it might take on an entirely new form. Possibilities include a computer file or, if you have the space, even an entire room. Basically it is gathering together, in an easily accessible place, resources that help defeat old, destructive habits by establishing new, healthy habits. Since people differ, you might immediately dismiss as inappropriate for you some options listed in the link, and other ideas might require experimentation to see how well they work and still others might need modification or be more effective when combined with one or more other options. On the other hand, what you find most effective on one occasion might not be the best option another time. A significant reason for this is that your best option will depend on what you are feeling at the time. On different occasions quite different feelings could be pressuring you to self-harm. So the first thing you should do is to try to identify what you are feeling. This can be quite difficult if you are used to pushing your feelings aside and not connecting with them, but please try. I give examples of how to prepare but, since each of us is unique, only God knows what is the ideal method for you at any given moment and he is keen to share that information with you. For understanding the temptation to self-harm, this divine promise is both enlightening and encouraging: 1 Corinthians 10:13 . . . God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. Since God will “make the way of escape”, keep seeking him for alternatives to self-harm that work best for you, remaining mindful that what is best could vary from one occasion to another. Note, however, that there is no promise that the temptation will disappear – only that God will provide the way for you to “endure it.” God believes in you. His plan is to make you strong, not some weakling who caves into pressure, but a spiritual champion. My suggestions appear in a link at the top of this webpage but let’s take music an as example of how the Comfort Box works. Anne keeps in her box certain music CDs that she finds helpful in easing the smoldering turmoil within. You might have your music on an iPod or whatever, or you might have your own musical instrument but you can place in the box a list of certain helpful music and where to find it. Anne uses soothing and/or uplifting music. Another friend uses anger music or songs dealing with loss, oppression or grief. This helps her express some of the deep feelings inside her. You might listen passively or sing and/or dance to the music. Worship music could prove powerful when you allow it to take you into the presence of the divine Healer whose compassion and devotion to you is boundless. In addition, keep in the box such things as art materials, a journal or writing materials, contact details of helpful people who are able distract, comfort or support you, pictures or mementos that remind you of personal achievements or happier times, print-outs of webpages from the huge www.netburst.net website, and so on. Among my suggestions is to put together a video of people weeping and wailing. Since, as I said, finding suitable material will be challenging, it is good to begin a collection long before it is needed. I suggest making copies because web sites tend to have short lives. The big advantage of having all the resources and ideas in one quickly accessible location is that when overwhelmed by intense feelings you could easily find yourself too stressed to try to hunt for them or even to think of all the options. So although in the link I provide some suggestions that cannot be put in a box, use the box to keep a list of the suggestions, in case some elude your memory at a critical time. Here’s some valuable insights from another friend of mine: I used to cut my wrist where I was held down by my abuser. I can’t stand the memory of him holding me there. I used to try to cut it away. Now I rub smooth, nice-smelling lotion where I want to cut. (For most people, the sense of smell is powerful in evoking memories.) Doing the opposite of self-harm (self-care) does help. I’ve now gone 15 months without self-harm, though I originally didn’t give it up for my sake, but for God’s. Damaging his creation – me – must hurt God. If I take a lot of time and care to make something, I would be very upset if someone damaged it. Surely God feels the same way. Keys to a New Life This webpage is so crammed with helps and ideas as to be initially overwhelming. It can initiate a powerful transformation within you, but it is like a spark that will blaze into a huge fire, or be quickly extinguished, depending on whether it is protected and fed. In order to ensure that it changes your life, you will need to re-read it several times to get it deep into your spirit and begin putting it into practice. Not just this webpage but the entire website is like life-saving blood pressure medication: taking it once will do almost nothing. For the promised benefits it must be taken day after day after day. Some people think of self-harm as releasing the inner pain. Some even visualize the blood flowing from self-injury as letting the inner pain out. The sad reality, however, is that this is nothing but a vain fantasy. It is as futile as the owner of a business who, rather than deal with the fact that his trusted employee is embezzling the company, cuts his arm to distract himself from the financial ruin his inaction is causing. Seething inside of many people who self-harm are intense feelings they cannot even identify. Often they mistakenly feel too ashamed to admit even to themselves that they have those feelings. This false shame is devastating and needs to be exposed for the cruel lie that it is. Irrespective of whether they are Christian, most people have a dangerously shallow understanding of morality, Christianity and/or healing from trauma. “You should be over it by now,” is as dumb as saying that someone with a hole in the heart should be running marathons because the hole happened decades ago. Time might heal minor cuts and abrasions but major things will never heal by themselves. “It’s unmanly to be afraid,” is equally dumb. Even war heroes hailed for their bravery can be safely tucked in bed at home years after the war and find themselves trembling in terror over memories of what they suffered. “It’s unchristian to be angry,” is likewise hopelessly mistaken. God himself is angry that people have been so cruel to you. Those who have not felt anger over what they have suffered have usually not fully forgiven at all but have simply short-circuited the forgiving process and deceived themselves into thinking they have forgiven. I expound in a link below how anger is an essential part of the long journey. Denial of one’s feelings is a very different thing to resolving the deep issues within. A good counselor can help you through the maze but never forgot that the best counselor is the one who longs to be your best friend and closest companion; the one who knows you like no one else can and believes in you; the one who has all the answers and all the gentle patience you need – God himself. Like the urge to scratch a skin disease, the urge to self-harm is just a symptom. Scratching might temporarily ease the itch but the itching soon returns and scratching actually ends up worsening the skin condition. To stop the scratching is good but treating the disease is more important still. Likewise, you need to treat the cause of your inner pain. So it is important to focus not merely on self-harm but on healing the underlying cause. For this reason, after fully absorbing into your spirit this webpage you will need to explore all the links below. Each webpage leads to many others, but if you are battling self-harm they are most important for your welfare. Here is what I believe your next steps should be. 1. Save the web address of this webpage. 2. Re-read this webpage at least once. 3. Read through the links below. Keys to Feeling Good About Yourself Self-Harm Alternatives: Emergency Relief Valuable practical help in safely releasing intense feelings The Foolishness of Living in Denial Inspiration to Hea l Serious, Do-It Yourself Healing From Emotional Pain This is crammed with helpful insights into our strong tendency when things go badly wrong to want to blame ourselves, God or others. It explains why this is so destructive and how Jesus’ sacrifice formed the perfect and totally satisfying cure. You Can Find Love How to be one with Jesus Forgiving Yourself God Loves Me! Receive Your Personal Revelation of God’s Love Being Convinced That God Has Forgiven You Forgiving Those Who Have Hurt You

Self-Harm Alternatives Emergency Relief Ask yourself: * What triggered this latest increase in your desire to self-harm? It might, for example, have been a memory, or a song, movie, website, smell, sound, taste, what someone said or did or the person’s physical presence. Are you able to remove the trigger – by switching off the radio, moving to another room or some such thing? * Do you remember feeling this way before? If so, did you find an workable alternative to self-harm? Would it, or a modification of it, work this time? * Try to identify what you are feeling. If you cannot do so, go to General Alternatives but if it is one of the following, click the appropriate link: Anger/Frustration Fear/Anxiety Depression Grief Emotional Numbness Urge to Punish Yourself Feeling a Failure/Extreme Low Self-Esteem Guilt Confusion General Alternatives to Self-Harm Real Healing Anger/Frustration * Play and/or sing anger music * Use a pillow, punching bag, or some such thing that you hit with a stick or punch The most healthy option is to avoid thinking of the object you hit as being yourself or any person. * Use a Wii You might choose a boxing game or some other form of combat or simply something to help you expend energy. * Tear up rags or old clothes, or perhaps books you no longer want, or choose something else you can safely expend energy destroying. The advantage of tearing rather than cutting is that it is important to lessen any connection between stress and cutting. If, however, you feel that cutting these things is the only alternative to cutting yourself then it is obviously preferable to cut them rather than cut yourself. * Write an angry letter Address it, perhaps, to the person who hurt you, detailing the injustices you have suffered and how wrong he or she was. Then, perhaps, tear it up and burn it or cross it out until it is illegible. Or you might write an angry poem or entry in a journal and preserve it. * Hard Physical Exercise Provided it is not so excessive that it endangers your health, hard exercise can be extremely helpful and positive. * Play and/or sing soothing music * Learn How to Scream or Shout * Make a Deliberate Effort to Relax * Get Angry at the Real Cause of Your Torment * For more options, see General Alternatives to Self-Harm * Don’t forget that this webpage offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing Fear/Anxiety * Reassure yourself that you are in physically safe surroundings This might include checking that doors and windows are locked and closing curtains. Alternatively it might involve visiting a friend. * Clothing Some types of clothing might make you feel safer than other types. Sometimes it can be helpful to ground yourself in the present by noting things about your surroundings that affirm you are no longer in the location and/or time in which you were mistreated. * Play Soothing Music * Use Touch Hugging a pillow or stuffed toy or snuggling into a soft blanket helps more people than you might imagine. Patting or playing with a pet might be helpful. * Connect with Nature It might be a hike in a wilderness area, or a stroll along the beach, or gardening, or playing with a pet or whatever is meaningful to you. * Anti-Anxiety Medication It is regrettable that, in some circles, medication has a stigma it does not deserve. Anyone tempted to self-harm is under extreme stress and if the stress has been there for long, your body is almost certainly suffering from a chemical imbalance that medication could help restore. That does not mean that what is currently available will work for everyone. Different people react in different ways to different anti-anxiety medication. Your doctor can only take an educated guess as to what will work best for you, so finding the ideal dosage and type of medication for you is likely to require a little trial and error. * Make a Deliberate Effort to Relax * For more options, see General Alternatives to Self-Harm * Don’t forget that this webpage offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing Depression * Boost your Self-Esteem Almost certainly, your low self-esteem keeps you from recognizing your achievements and good qualities, but try at times when you are not so depressed to build your collection. If you have any trophies or diplomas then, of course, include them but your achievements might be less tangible. You might keep in your box such things as a record of encouraging things that people have said about you, and a list of your accomplishments. * Dress up For women, another help to feeling better about themselves might be to paint their nails, fix their hair, put on makeup and perfume and get dressed up. Perhaps get a professional photo of you looking your best and keep it in the box. * Photos & Mementos You might have pictures or mementos that remind you of happier times or that help you imagine yourself in a happier or safer situation. Sadly, not everyone has loved ones who make life worth living but those who do might use photos of these people to inspire them to resist destructive behavior for their loved one’s sake. * Play uplifting music or sing bright songs. Consider dancing to such music. Praise and worship music is particularly powerful if you let it move you to become actively involved. * Connect with Nature It might be a hike in a wilderness area, or a stroll along the beach, or gardening, or playing with a pet or whatever is meaningful to you. * For more options, see General Alternatives to Self-Harm * Don’t forget that this webpage offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing Grief * Play and/or sing sad songs, or songs dealing with loss, oppression or grief. * Learn to Weep and/or Wail Emotional Numbness If you are feeling emotionally numb there are ways to assure yourself that you can feel without resorting to self-injury. A cold shower is an extreme example. Some people have found it helpful just to run warm water over their hands and gently wash them, focusing on the feelings in their hands. This can be soothing, as well as reassuring that one truly can feel. * Use Touch Hug a pillow or stuffed toy or snuggle into a soft blanket. Pat or play with a pet. * Use Your Sense of Smell If you have at least some sense of smell, consider sniffing smelling salts, perfume and so on, to remind yourself that your senses are truly alive. * For more options, see General Alternatives to Self-Harm * Don’t forget that this webpage offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing Urge to Punish Yourself * Use Blood-like Substances * Most options listed under Anger/Frustration are relevant. * Don’t forget that this webpage offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing Feeling a Failure/Extreme Low Self-Esteem Like the “ugly duckling,” you have been battered by ridicule and false accusations with such devastating frequency that you now find it beyond belief that you really are a beautiful and highly capable swan. You are far more valuable and capable than you dare imagine. * Note the web address of this page so you won’t get lost, then go to Why God Loves No One More Than You * Don’t forget that the webpage you are reading offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing Guilt No matter who you are or what you have done, the moment you come (or return) to Christ, all guilt feelings are nothing but false accusations, as slanderous as accusing the spotless Son of God of moral failure. The person who did those awful things is dead. You are gloriously alive but a totally different person – “a new creation” – mind-bogglingly pure and innocent. Your only problem is that the transformation you have experienced is so unbelievably dramatic that your conscience hasn’t caught up with spiritual reality. Instead of needlessly caving into false feelings, note the web address of this page so you won’t get lost, then discover who you really are by reading Forgiving Yourself and the pages it leads to. * Don’t forget that this webpage offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing Confusion * Ground Yourself in the Present Take special note of your surroundings to reassure yourself that you are not in the time or place where you suffered past trauma. * Contact a friend or counsellor * For more options, see General Alternatives to Self-Harm * Don’t forget that this webpage offers only temporary relief For long-lasting solutions, see Real Healing General Alternatives to Self-Harm Keep an Emotional Diary It can be very helpful to keep a journal in which you record your overwhelming emotions while you are feeling them. It can also help you get more in touch with your feelings if you feel numb. Should you are worried about people reading it, you can develop your own codes that just looks like doodles. Make a Deliberate Effort to Relax Sit in a comfortable chair or lie down or take a warm bath. Once settled, breathe deliberately and calmly. Every time you exhale, picture the tension leaving your body with the breath. Visualize what for you is a deeply soothing scene. It might be sunbaking on a secluded tropical beach. Make it as real as you can. Involve all your senses. See, for example, the gentle lapping of the sparkling sun-soaked water. See fish in the water and palm trees slowly swaying in the refreshing breeze. Are there any butterflies? Feel the soft white sand and the cozy warmth of the sun on your relaxed body. Hear the sea gulls and the soothing rhythmic lap of the sea. As you inhale, what do you smell? Is it the aroma of food cooking on a fire nearby or is it something else? Consciously relax every muscle in your body. Perhaps start with your jaw, then your forehead, then your hands, then your tummy. These are parts of the body where stress is often focused, but gradually move on to other muscle groups as well. Every time you breathe out, relax even more. Feel yourself sinking deeper and deeper into whatever your body is resting on. As you luxuriate in these feelings, assure yourself that you deserve this peace and ease and comfort. Know that through your union with Christ, God is smiling approvingly upon you, his precious child. Get Angry at the Real Cause of Your Torment Despite the appalling frequency with which the apostle Paul was slandered, betrayed, slapped, punched, stoned, whipped and tortured by humans, he wrote: Ephesians 6:12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Expose the real enemy. Get to the heart of your distress by directing your anger not at yourself, nor at the human drones who treated you so criminally, but at the spiritual entities who instigated and empowered the evil directed at you. Majestically rise up in holy indignation, exercising the terrifying authority invested in you through the Spotless Son of God bearing in his own body the full guilt, degradation, punishment and wrath of God incurred by the atrocities of the entire human race. While snuggling into the comforting, protective embrace of your holy, compassionate, omnipotent Savior, angrily attack every demon that has ever opposed you until they flee from you in wide-eyed terror. Fight Lies with Truth Instead of letting negative thoughts churn through your mind, exercise sheer faith by telling yourself over and over the very opposite of your concern. For example, if you feel useless, keep telling yourself such things as, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (adapted from Philippians 4:13); if you feel guilty, keep telling yourself such things as, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” (Romans 8:1). A most effective way to counteract devastating lies is to keep thanking and praising God that the exact opposite is true. Rather than wallowing in hurtful, depressing lies, fight back by doing your best to rejoice in the truth – even if the lies feel far more real than God’s truth. Let Yourself Scream or Shout This is a helpful, natural way of releasing pent up emotion and yet many find it very difficult to do for either practical reasons – the neighbors thinking you are mad – or because you feel too inhibited. A practical suggestion is to play loud music and scream into a pillow. Another possibility is to hike/drive into some isolated place. If you feel inhibited, you might consider practicing in a place where shouting is considered socially acceptable, such as a major football game. Learn to Weep and/or Wail I explain in my full page about self-harm how, despite the false impression given in some cultures, there is nothing weak or unmanly about this natural expression of emotion. By what has been said or done to them in the past, many people have been robbed of the ability to shed tears freely and without shame. That, in itself, is abuse and should not be tolerated. Fight back. Letting yourself cry in private is a way of not letting such an abuser win. In the Bible and a wide range of other cultures, people skilled at weeping and wailing were paid to visit those whose mourning the death of a loved one. I believe this is psychologically sound in that being surrounded by actors expressing deep grief through tears, shrieks and bodily movements is likely to help those suffering a loss to feel less inhibited about doing the same. It seems these cultures have correctly understood that such emotional release speeds recovery from grief. Those who stifle their emotions are likely to remain deeply affected by the loss for a much longer time. I suggest considering trying something similar to those who use professional mourners by finding videos of people weeping and wailing. Locating suitable material will be challenging but you might be able to find examples on the Internet, and TV news reports often show highly expressive displays of emotion at Middle Eastern funerals and tragedies. Many hurting people fear that if they start crying they will tap into something so deep that they will never be able to stop. This fear is quite unfounded. A Little Creativity Express your feelings in scribbles or more artistically. Besides painting or drawing, possibilities include cutting out a shape in paper or creating something with play dough or clay. Then, perhaps, angrily destroy it or, alternatively, carefully preserve it as a monument to what you have suffered. Writing Keep a journal or notebook in which you can express your thoughts and feelings in words. Or you might write a poem, or short fictitious stories. You don’t have to be articulate. Even scribbling single words could help. Or you might write an e-mail detailing your distress and what you have suffered and send it to someone who cares or even post it to yourself. Worship music Worship music can prove powerful when you allow it to take you into the presence of the divine Healer whose compassion and devotion to you is boundless. Quotes Read special quotes or words from others that can re-direct your thoughts to something more positive and more in line with the loving way God sees you. You might print out pages from the huge www.netburst.net website, record the web address of comforting webpages, put quotes on the walls of your house, and so on. Mental Gymnastics A friend of mine sometimes finds it helpful to distract herself by doing crossword puzzles. For you it might be a computer game or something more in line with your own interests. Contact Helpful People They might be trusted friends, family members or a pastor/counsellor who can help distract, comfort or support you during this difficult time. Prayer so Profound and Passionate that it Breaks the Language Barrier When the King James Bible says, “Make a joyful noise unto the LORD,” (Psalms 100:1), it is translating the normal Hebrew word for a battle cry – a blood curling scream of such ear-splitting intensity that it is intended to unnerve the enemy. Note, however, that what makes so special this scream from the depths of the soul the psalmist urges us to release is that it is directed to the Lord . “Deep calls to deep” says another Psalm (Psalm 42:7) Lamentations 3:55 I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit. Charles Finney (1792-1875) had a divine encounter so intense that he says, “I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart.” Like a famous detective seeking to solve a mystery by seeing known facts in a new light, let your mind run wild chasing the implications of these Scriptures: Romans 8:26 . . . the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Mark 14:33-35 . . . he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. . . . Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed . . . Hebrews 5:7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him . . . Paul spoke of prayer that is so deep that it by-passes the limits of one’s mind. It is so extreme as to be incomprehensible to one’s intellect and yet it is divinely effective because one’s very spirit is praying; uttering mysteries in sounds that one’s mind can’t make sense of (1 Corinthians 14:15-15). So let yourself go. Don’t limit yourself to words, or to your own understanding, as your pour out your heart to the heart of God. Don’t hold back as your heart connects with the divine heart that breaks for you. Merge with the heart that feels your anguish with divine intensity and knows you more intimately and exhaustively than even you can know yourself. Use Blood-like Substances The problem with this option is that it reinforces an undesirable link between blood and temporary stress-relief. So I don’t recommend it except as a very last resort when the only alternative seems to be spilling your own blood. * Get ketchup in a plastic container and squeeze hard and repeatedly, letting it flow out. A mostly empty container of somewhat dried up ketchup might be too frustrating for you but it has the advantage of requiring the expenditure of more energy and so allowing you to focus your feelings in that direction. * Squeeze the ketchup on to your body – especially the part you are tempted to injure. * Use your creativity with a red ball pen or whiteboard marker or red paint or beetroot juice or other reddish liquid or the blood from meat. * I know one person who has even found watching a medical show helpful. If You Must Inflict Pain If you feel utterly unable to stop yourself inflicting pain, put a rubber band on your wrist and use it to sting yourself. You do not deserve this but at least it is better than causing physical damage and/or risking infection. Before doing so, however, could you please read the next paragraph. If only you could see yourself through God’s loving eyes you would understand that no matter how atrocious your sins might be, you deserve not pain but comfort and understanding. Whatever you have done, it has been utterly cancelled by what Christ has done for you. It breaks God’s heart that things have become so distorted in your mind that you would choose to hurt yourself when Jesus let himself be tortured to death to render your self-inflicted pain unnecessary. God believes in you. I beg you to talk it over with him. Real Healing If you were in physical pain, the real answer is not to find ways of coping with the pain but to cure the cause of the pain. And the same is true for the inner pain that tempts you to self-harm. To be freed from the urge to hurt yourself, it is important to work on healing the inner turmoil that drives you to seek relief through self-harm. This takes courage and time but is deeply rewarding. For the first steps on this exciting journey to wholeness, see Cure for Self-Harm .

Fear, Phobias, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Christian Help It might be a phobia or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or an anxiety disorder, but fear not only torments and cripples, it floods its victims with feelings of defeat; often shaming them into silence about the full extent of their fear. With so many people desperately trying to keep others from knowing how afraid they are, the result is a nasty vicious circle in which those worthy of our compassion feel more alone and abnormal than ever. Fear is not only highly distressing in itself, fearing something that most people are unafraid of can make one feel not just a loser but a freak subject to ridicule and scorn. Especially if you are a man, it makes you feel a failure, since one of the lies perpetuated about men is that real men are not human enough to suffer fear. It can even make one feel a failure as a Christian. So before tackling fear itself, I long to soothe the devastating feelings of shame, inferiority and condemnation that so often follow fear, like an infection following a wound and making an already crippling injury even worse. Approaching the topic from this direction will also help us understand the true nature of fear. Go Easy on Yourself: It Helps Before letting anyone condemn you by piously quoting, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear,”(2 Timothy 1:7) remember that this same anointed Apostle wrote: 1 Corinthians 2:3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling . 2 Corinthians 7:5 For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn conflicts on the outside, fears within . Galatians 4:11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you. (Emphasis mine) Fear is basically a strong temptation. Like all temptation, we can cave into it, or stagger on regardless. Not even our holy Lord avoided strong temptation. Indeed, since “he himself suffered when he was tempted” (Hebrews 2:18) and “has been tempted in every way, just as we are,” (Hebrews 4:15) he whose sweat was like blood (Luke 22:44) must surely have suffered horrific fear. One of many reasons why you could be quite unjustly condemning yourself for being afraid is that you might otherwise be healthy and have an undiagnosed medical condition causing you to be excessively anxious/afraid. I won’t dwell on this, but it would be cruelly negligent of me not to draw your attention to this very real possibility. Don’t be too hasty in dismissing this as inapplicable to you. This biochemical or neurological disorder is far more common than is generally realized. For example, just one way in which it can manifest itself is as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Even though two or three people in every hundred suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, studies indicate that in the United States it takes an average of nine years from the onset of the disorder for people to receive even a correct diagnosis and, amazingly, a further eight years before they are suitably treated. Other ways that medically-induced anxiety can manifest itself is by Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, phobias and so on. Paranoia induced by a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia is totally different but remains another example of fear that strikes people regardless of how macho or devout or intelligent they are. To lack compassion for people with such illnessness is as despicable as throwing stones at someone for being born a redhead. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” warned our Savior (Matthew 7:1). Then there’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which leaves trauma victims continually on-edge about the possibility of a repeat. People who can’t understand how trauma can have this effect are displaying not their mental toughness but their ignorance. One of the greatest ways to honor God is to trust him. Thankfully, however, our wonderful Lord fully knows us. He understands better than we do that trusting him is so much harder for those whose trust has been violated by key people in their life – especially if it happened repeatedly during their tender, most impressionable years. Simply having more fear or doubt than other Christians you know is not an acceptable reason for despising oneself. The devil is the Christian’s accuser (Revelation 12:10). Trying to make you feel bad about yourself is part of his job description. So let’s not put him out of a job by doing it for him. Not even Jesus could avoid temptation, and the devil is cunning enough to particularly target us in whatever areas we seem to him to be most vulnerable. That will vary from person to person. Those who suffer fewer attacks than you in the area of fear or doubt are sure to have far greater battles than you in some other realm – chemical dependence or debt or anger or lying or pride or some uncommon secret sin you would never guess. Just because the areas in which you are most attacked differ from someone else is no reason for feeling either superior or inferior. In most cases, when people seem to have greater faith than you, it is just an illusion. People can seem to have rock-solid faith in God’s provision when they have $10,000 in the bank and have never lacked. Put them $10,000 in debt with angry creditors after them and most people’s supposed faith will turn out to be largely hot air. Anyone can seem to be filled with the peace of God until they are mugged three times, been raped and suffered home invasions. Since you alone can experience exactly what you are feeling, suffering any unpleasant feeling such as fear, pain and grief, can be very isolating. If you had blood gushing out of massive wounds, you would have almost everyone’s sympathy but if there were no obvious injury – such as chronic back pain – the extent to which people believe you and sympathize will be much more variable. With no one but God able to get inside you and literally feel your terror, you are left wide open to being misunderstood and feeling devastatingly alone. And this is precisely what the enemy of our souls lusts for. Let’s briefly explore this supernatural angle. Our spiritual enemy is like a hungry lion that does not attack an entire flock but strives to isolate one sheep from the flock before attacking it. But the enemy we face employs this tactic with more intelligence than any lion. He is the master of psychological warfare, seeking to weaken us by telling us over and over and over that we are pathetic, useless, and so on. His most potent weapon, however, is condemnation. What makes condemnation so dangerous is that it deceives us into feeling cut off, not just from other Christians, but from God, our protector. Since we all tend to shrink from anyone we suspect thinks negatively of us, if we slip into the satanic snare of supposing that our fear causes Christians and God himself to think poorly of us, we will begin to see little point in staying close to the flock and to the Shepherd and so tend to drift from them, thus making ourselves highly vulnerable to spiritual attack. So in addition to significant natural reasons for feeling isolated and putting oneself down, there are strong reasons for expecting to have malicious, supernatural help in feeling this way. Understanding Fear Many of us find it particularly difficult to have fear-crushing faith. To understand this we must understand the nature of fear. For our protection, fear spreads beyond the specific. If you were almost killed by a snake, it is not enough protection to fear that specific snake from now on. You need to be wary of all venomous creatures. But if you were alone in a foreign jungle, how would you know what to avoid? That’s how fear operates. It does not know where to draw the line and acts as if you were alone, cut off from all other knowledge. Fear is dominated by personal experience and finds it nearly impossible to benefit from other sources of information, no matter how reliable and useful those sources are. Despite your intellect telling you it is idiotic, you are therefore likely to end up feeling ill at ease about harmless snakes, legless lizards, eels and so on, just because of a bad experience with a certain snake. This is also how it is with our feelings toward God. Having been let down and deeply hurt by humans – especially during our formative years – causes our fear to spread from certain unscrupulous people all the way to God himself. This fear persists despite our intellect telling us that God is not subject to human failings. Just as it is possible, but far from easy, for someone terrified of snakes to overcome an irrational fear of harmless snakes, so it is possible, but far from easy, to overcome the groundless fear that God might be as unreliable as other key people in our lives. If you battle fear, you stand in holy company. I won’t even attempt to list all the Old Testament saints who had to be urged not to fear, and we are well aware of how all of Jesus’ disciples fled and/or denied him. Let’s move to Spirit-filled apostles: 2 Corinthians 7:5 For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn – conflicts on the outside, fears within. Yes, “fears within,” says Paul of himself and his anointed companions as they served in the center of God’s holy will. “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life,” writes this outstanding man of faith (2 Corinthians 1:8). Twice in the one prayer request, the great apostle sought prayer that he might not cave into fear: Ephesians 6:19-20 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly  . . . (Emphasis mine) And with all the times that Paul got beaten for preaching, he had plenty to fear. He even had reason to fear going from point A to point B. If some people today have a fear of flying, remember that travel was so much more dangerous in Paul’s time that not only did he write that he had been shipwrecked three times and once spent a day and a night in the open sea, he had at least another shipwreck to go (2 Corinthians 11:25; Acts 27:41). Divine protection might have kept him alive but it did not prevent harrowing experiences. And in the next verse he wrote of being “in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits . . .” Frankly, the average Christian has weird ideas of what it means to be truly spiritual and divinely favored. The holy Son of God, of course, is the most Spirit-filled, not-of-this-world, apple-of-God’s-eye person ever to wear human flesh and yet not even he floated on some sort of spiritual equivalent of a drug-induced haze that insulated him from the devastating emotional intensity of life’s blows. Far from being granted super-human power to endure, the divine miracle worker who brought the supernatural into the lives of many failed even to drag his cross the required distance. Despite what some seem to think, we are not called to be less human than our Holy Lord. Thousands of Christians must slip on blindfolds whenever they meet such Scriptures as: Mark 14:33-34  . . . he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” . . . Luke 22:42,44 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” . . . And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. Hebrews 5:7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death . . . Not even angels could lower the intensity of Jesus’ anguish. It was after an angel came to sustain Jesus in the garden that his sweat dripped like blood to the ground (Luke 22:42-44). The highest we can ever hope for is to be like Jesus. It was prophesied that he delighted (King James Version of Psalm 40:8, but not Hebrews 10:7) to do God’s will. That sounds like the spiritual euphoria we hope for – until we face the reality that the one we worship sweat profusely while wrestling over submitting to God. Don’t imagine you have failed if you find life as hard as our Lord did. Most of us are plagued by some sort of irrational fear – a phobia – and we will find it amazingly unaffected by what we believe. For example, an expert can totally convince someone who is terrified of snakes that a certain large snake is perfectly harmless and yet despite utterly believing the expert he will still be jittery about picking up the snake. It would be lunacy for the expert to feel offended and conclude that the man’s fear indicates that he does not trust his expertise. And God is no lunatic: he knows when fear does not indicate lack of faith in his Word but merely indicates the strength of the fear. Many people might have had an easier life than you and so trust is easier for them but don’t imagine this fools God into regarding them as more diligent Christians. Counterattack The crushing fear that God might be like unscrupulous humans threatens to suck the life out of anyone with a history of being badly treated by humans. The way to counter this is to build in your mind an overwhelmingly powerful conception of God that is worthy of the stunning perfection of your Divine Lover. Keep your thoughts floodlit with the warm sunshine of the truth about God. Without it your mind will end up more like a dingy morgue than the residence of the King of kings. To the delight of demons – and sometimes with their help – slanderous lies about ourselves attack us all. Thoughts come to us, such as, “I’m useless. God doesn’t love me as much as Pastor Bigwig or Sister Starchpants. I’ll never amount to anything.” Letting such untruths scurry like a rat plague unchallenged through our head quickly becomes a degrading mental habit as enslaving as any addition. You can definitely break free but, especially at first, it’s a formidably hard slog, requiring persistent determination. 1 John 4:18-19  . . . perfect love drives out fear . . . We love because he first loved us. If perfect love is the antidote to fear, let’s remember that God alone is the source of perfect love. Since, as the above Scripture reveals, we love because he first loved us, falling in love with God begins with an awareness of how much he loves us. And from there faith is launched. As I remarked in one of my many pages about God’s love for us: I can easily believe that the atom-holding, earth-spinning, galaxy-sustaining, life-giving Source of everything wonderful can do whatever he likes. Even the devil believes God’s power. My difficulty is believing that God’s special love for me makes him long to use that power on my behalf. Few of us doubt that God can do amazing things. The weak link in our faith is believing that he would do such things for ordinary, inconsequential you and me. We suspect we are not sufficiently special in the Almighty’s eyes to warrant such attention. Oh yes, ‘God loves everyone,’ but we have a hunch that by the time that love reaches us it has spread pretty thin. I’m just one of millions. Why would God want to focus his omnipotence on me? If we could grasp the enormity of God’s love for us, our faith would sky-rocket. You might be able to parrot a theologically correct definition of God but that is of little benefit unless it dominates your thinking and attitudes, and your heart leaps with a resounding, “Yes!” at the very thought. In short, you need to be head-over-heels in love with the most beautiful Person in the universe. A key way to achieve this is to habitually spend considerable time thanking and praising God throughout the day – not just once a week but daily, and not just praising and delighting in God’s raw power but in his love and goodness, and not just his theoretical attributes but his intensely intimate and passionate love and warm tenderness toward you . Comfort “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you,” says Scripture. Rather than beat ourselves up over finding this frustratingly difficult to put into practice, let’s luxuriate in the wonder that Almighty God, Ruler of the universe would invite seemingly insignificant you and me to hand over to him all our worries and concerns. And you don’t have to frantically beg him to help: “he cares for you,” says this word of God. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. . . .” pleads Jesus (Matthew 11:28). Digest this Scripture: Philippians 4:4-8 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! . . . Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving , present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things . (Emphasis mine) See how enjoying the peace of God is bathed in rejoicing in God and thanking him and mentally dwelling on positive, praiseworthy things. Day after day, month after month, the mournful dirge of defeatist sayings and condemnation keeps repeating like an old broken record in our minds. Year after year the same depressing put-downs keep playing inside, worse than the most infuriating jingle from a TV commercial we can’t get out of our minds. Persistently drown out those oppressive lies with the sweet strains of adoring praise to God in your mind. As you keep lifting him higher, you are lifted higher. When praise slackens you begin to slump again. Let Fear Infuriate You There is a psychological condition known as Learned Helplessness whereby someone who is trapped in a situation for long enough eventually falls into defeatism such that when conditions change, allowing him to break free, he feels so defeated by his previous experience of being unable to escape that he doesn’t even muster a genuine effort to free himself and for years needlessly continues to act as if he were trapped. Learned Helplessness is not limited to humans. An example of it comes from the almost bygone era of circus elephants. Trainers drive a huge stake into the ground and chain a baby elephant to it. With all its might, the baby pulls in every direction for hours. Eventually it learns that escape is impossible and it gives up trying. By the time it grows massively strong it feels so defeated that all it takes to keep the powerful beast acting like a prisoner is a mere tent peg it could easily rip from the ground. This is what fear does to us: being intimidated by fear in the past causes us to reach the point where we no longer try to be free, even though we are now empowered by the Spirit of Almighty God. A dear friend of mine is truly inspirational. Despite having suffered a past filled with betrayals and oppression, she keeps overcoming and goes from strength to strength. The Lord told once told her, “Fear is a boundary to be pushed, not a cage to live in.” Run from your fears and they will terrorize. Face them and they will vaporize. Fear is a horrible feeling; but it is just a feeling; not reality. When it is based not on present danger but is a mere carryover from a past experience, fear is deception. It is a seductive temptress enticing us to cheat on God and ditch his beautiful plans for our lives. Fear is an opponent; an enemy wanting to stop us from enjoying what is rightfully ours. It is a thief; a disgusting con man cheating us out of our rights and duping us into letting him keep robbing us of peace, achievement and fulfillment. Fear is a weakling acting like a bully, humiliating us. It is low life asking us to strip ourselves of our Christ-bought freedom and dignity. It holds a toy gun to our head and for no rational reason we let it order us around. It is a malicious prankster hoping we will be terrorized by a cardboard cutout. It paralyses us into languishing in defeat like rabbits in a harmless spotlight. Fear is a dirty, pesky fly getting in our face, annoying us. It is a filthy liar falsely accusing us, and we not only meekly sit there listening to the slanderous putdowns, we foolishly accept the garbage as truth. Fear is a prison taking away our freedom; a bleak dungeon that we dupe ourselves into pretending is a cozy comfort zone. We block off the open door with a Home, Sweet Home placard and shiver in the cold; choosing chilly isolation instead of sunny reality; preferring to feel sorry for ourselves than become achievers. Fear is an ever-encroaching desert; a cancer than keeps spreading to healthy parts of a person. Fear is an enemy, but one we can defeat; winning for ourselves immense glory. Others might not realize the magnitude of our victory in breaking out of our cruel confinement into normality, but all of heaven knows and it will forever hail us as heroes. The appropriate response is to rise up in anger and refuse to let fear rob, cheat and bluff us any longer. It might be unpleasant, but fear is a mere feeling, and we are called to live by faith, not by feelings. We might have been born in defeat and mediocrity but we have been born again as children of the King of kings. This makes us divine royalty; princes and princesses of the Lord of the universe, not slaves to feelings. Empowered by supernatural union with our crucified Lord, let’s die to hopes of a soft life and rise to the glory of our calling as Christ’s champions. The journey to Christlikeness is neither quick nor easy, but as Christ sweat for you in Gethsemane, so you can sweat for him – and win eternal glory. Practical Help There are minor points of connection between God-pleasing faith and relaxation – the Bible speaks of the rest of faith, for example (Hebrews 4:3) – but being tense is not spiritually dangerous. Fear, however, always causes our muscles to tense up and it has been proved that if we can learn to keep our muscles relaxed in what would have been a fearful situation, fear will subside. The primary value of deliberately relaxing is twofold. Spiritually, it is making a faith statement – a little like leprous Naaman washing seven times in the Jordan, even though he felt ridiculous doing it (2 Kings 5:10-14). Psychologically, it helps because relaxed muscles are incompatible with fear. Making an effort to relax is faith in action – and faith is the most critical of all spiritual exercises. Here’s a technique that has been scientifically demonstrated to empower people to overcome phobias, etc. Lie down or sit in a comfy armchair. Literally, breathe easy. Imagine yourself in a very relaxing situation. It might, for example, be lazing on the white sand of a tropical beach. Hear the gentle lap of the sea. If convenient, aid relaxation by having soothing music quietly playing in the background. Worship music is a suggestion. After a while, concentrating on individual muscle groups, first tense a muscle group, then relax those muscles and gain an awareness of what it feels like to have each muscle group relaxed. Give special attention to your jaw muscles, your forehead, unclenching your fists, and relaxing your stomach muscles and your neck and shoulders. When you are fully relaxed, imagine yourself being very slightly exposed to whatever it is that you wish to stop fearing. If, for example, your goal is to overcome a fear of spiders, imagine yourself 20 paces from a small, harmless spider. If you cannot remain totally relaxed at that thought, immediately stop and think of the relaxing scene until you are utterly relaxed again. If 20 paces was too close, when you are ready to restart, you might have to imagine the spider being 50 paces away or even further. The goal is to be totally relaxed while thinking of a spider in the distance and very slowly imagine yourself closer and closer, progressing only at a speed that allows you to remain totally relaxed. If at any time you notice yourself being slightly tense, back off, get relaxed again and continue only when you are ready. This process will probably need to be continued every day for quite a while until you can be fully relaxed while imagining yourself close to a large spider. Once you can effortlessly do this, you are ready to try it with a real spider, starting again with the spider being a long way away and withdrawing if you notice yourself unable to remain totally relaxed. You’re smart enough to adapt this to fit whatever fear you wish to conquer. A Real Life Example A man e-mailed me, saying, “I am very depressed. I cannot even leave my house. I have been this way for three years. I just can’t get better. I have prayed many times for healing. Please pray for my healing.” I shared this anonymously with my ministry team and here’s one of the responses I received to pass on to him: My name is Margaret, I’m 59, divorced, disabled and a prayer warrior at NetBurst.Net . I feel God telling me to write to you, because I was once like you, my brother. For years I prayed that God heal me from the schizophrenic episodes and depression that plagued me. Then one day I heard a voice telling me it has been done already. I now recognize that voice as God’s. What does it mean? Well, I had wasted a lot of time waiting for a ‘miraculous delivery,’ thinking that I had to feel the healing; that it had to be instantly noticeable; that there was no longer any barrier keeping me a prisoner of Satan’s. What I’ve learned is that healing comes the moment we ask it, BUT we do have to take that first step to accept it. For years, I had blamed others for the isolation I felt. I blamed them for isolating me because of my schizophrenia, because they couldn’t understand what I was going through. I’d so withdrawn into myself that I couldn’t even begin to think of others; it was all about me. Then I felt Jesus gently take my hand, and lead me outside. I was terrified, but I knew Jesus was right beside me and would never leave me. So despite my fears and anxiety, I took a deep breath and, asking Jesus to stay with me, opened the door of my house and stepped outside. The first day, I just sat on my porch, enjoying the sun on my skin, breathing in fresh air, looking at things around me. The second day, I ventured down to the corner of my street. Each day I made another advance, until suddenly I found myself among the people that God was to call me to minister: the street folk. There I discovered that the world was more than myself, and I lost all depressive thoughts. Satan would have you remain trapped – just as he tried with me – waiting for obvious signs of ‘healing’; not wanting you to take that first step outside your self-imposed prison to discover the world waiting for you. Sometimes God does it all, but more often, God wants us to take part in our own healing. So, my brother, open the door, grasp Jesus’s hand, and step out in faith. You have been healed! God is just waiting for you to accept his healing. “Faith is resting in the knowledge that God has an objective in leaving me on the scene when I feel useless to Him and a burden to others.” Pamela Reeve Laughing at What Scares You In one of my webpages about nightmares I said that someone emailed me about how Jesus had taught her to overcome nightmares and sleep soundly. Her nightmares focused on ‘bad dad’ – her now-deceived abusive father who, when she was little, used to come into her bedroom when she was asleep. She calls Jesus ‘Daddy.’ Here’s a little of what helped her: During the day, Daddy and I played thinking games. At first it was easy. He sent me a thought like I was eating jello and a furry little ball with eyes and a smile jumped out. My part of the game was to make it not scary. So I sent Daddy a thought about making the ball my new pet! Even now I play with my new pet. His name is Sally. I asked Daddy why he was playing this game. He replied that it helps my mind grow strong enough to repel bad thoughts all by itself. That’s important for getting good sleep. He said I need to have a strong mind. Then, little by little, the games got harder. Daddy sent me the thought of bad dad coming in my room and I thought about Daddy coming in and snapping his fingers and turning bad dad into a funny clown who juggled and told funny jokes. I learned that the funnier the solution the better I felt. Love the Cure! Let’s strengthen ourselves by bringing together what we have so far learned. Church-goers lacking compassion for people suffering mental afflictions are highlighting not their doctrinal superiority but their embarrassing lack of entry-level Christian love. They are a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1) who have never grasped that “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love ,” (Galatians 5:6 – emphasis mine). Theirs is the pride that precedes a fall (Proverbs 16:18). Those deceived by an easier life into thinking they have great faith have a special promise to claim: “whoever exalts himself will be humbled” (Matthew 23:12). For far more people than realize it, being fearful is like being subject to migraines – literally a medical condition that strikes some but not others and who is struck has nothing to do with levels of faith, devotion or manliness. Likewise, having an easy, protected childhood surrounded by warm encouraging people will render a person much less hounded by doubt and fear. Indeed, such people will not only avoid the crippling devastation of Learned Helplessness, they will have Learned Optimism built into their lives. They can be expected to ooze peace and faith, but it is no achievement on their part. Nevertheless, our spiritual enemy will target his attacks on whatever are our most vulnerable areas. In the hope of conning us into thinking we are inferior Christians and less loved of God, he is keen to fill us with false shame and condemnation over having that area of vulnerability. Because it is true that “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31) the devil uses condemnation in a relentless attempt to undermine our faith in the extent to which God loves us, approves of us and is eager to support us. Unfortunately, having a childhood short on people who believed in us, unconditionally loved us and never let us down, makes it so much harder to believe that God is totally different to the people in our backgrounds who concreted our conception of what we can expect in life. Painstakingly chipping away at that concrete and building a conception of God that is totally contrary to all that life’s experiences taught us during our formative years is a mammoth task. What makes it so enormous is that to have full effect, this new belief needs to grow so strong that it seeps deep into even our subconscious. Our loving Lord understands what a long and laborious task this is and he is far more patient with us than most of us are with ourselves. He knows there are people who, through no virtue of their own, had a life that makes faith easier. And he is not duped into thinking their easy life makes them more worthy of his praise. Like a father beaming with joy at his little baby who is not yet able to stop dribbling and soiling itself, so God is far more proud of you than the devil wants you to realize. Nevertheless, the way out of our doubts and fears involves the hard grind of reshaping our thinking about God and his goodness, trustworthiness, passionate love for us and, through Christ’s astounding sacrifice, his approval of us. This comes through dwelling not on us and our unworthiness, nor the faults of others, but on God’s worthiness and the mind-boggling extent to which he loved us eons before we even thought of attempting to reciprocate. If ever, “to know him is to love him” applied to anyone, it applies to our wonderful Lord. Loving God not only has stupendous benefits for ourselves – just one of which is the breaking of fear – but it’s what God most wants from us: Matthew 22:37  . . . ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The endless joy can be yours of being thrillingly in love with the perfect Lover who will never tire of you, grow old or die. Like lust, fear is just a feeling. It comes to us all and seeks to enslave us. And like any addiction, the more we yield to it, the more we feel enslaved and it begins to feel (yes, another feeling) that resistance is useless. But Christians are called to live by faith, not feelings. For us, fear, demons and temptation are nothing but bluff. The battle can be tough – as it was for our Lord – but through him we are divine royalty who do not have to let anything enslave us any longer. We can walk free, but waiting for the unpleasant feeling to stop before doing so is like Peter waiting for the water to evaporate before stepping out of the boat. Peter walked on water because Jesus was with him (even though he could barely see him in the dark) and told him to come. Likewise, Jesus is with you asking you to walk with him, even though feelings of terror mock you. Let’s look at 2 Timothy 1:7 in two Bible versions: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (King James Version) For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (New International Version) Since neither fear, nor even being timid, is of God we do not have to submit to it. God’s antidote is the love and power that is ours through Christ. And to live in the power of God’s love and counteract a twisted slave mentality, we need a sound mind. This, too, is a gift from God but just as we must deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow Christ (Luke 9:23), a sound mind takes daily cooperation with Christ. In fact, it takes considerable mental self-discipline. Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. What God wants for you is uncompromisingly, unsurpassably good, and to fully grasp this fact we must, in cooperation with God, renew our minds. Any lazy layabout can raise his/her level of physical fitness to the point of improved life expectancy but it takes persistent, determined effort. So it is with spiritual fitness. Whether you can is not in question, but it is up to you whether you put in the required effort. Nevertheless, it is not my intention to waste your time, my time and God’s time with hot air that merely leaves you feeling warm and gooey for the few minutes you have until cold reality smacks you. I can’t lose weight for you, but I could run with you. Likewise, I could take your hand and spend hours with you as you daily persist with the hard slog of rebuilding your view of God. I could stay for as long as it takes for you to realize you are in the safe arms of God 24/7 and are ever-so-slowly but surely changing from glory to glory. That’s why I have poured years into crafting the following webpages. Though only a fraction of my writings, they are carefully selected for their relevance to overcoming fear by building your view of God. If you are serious about change, save the web address of this page so you don’t lose the links and then commit to prayerfully reading them. There's Hope Forgiving Yourself God's Anti-depressant God Isn't Fair?

My Battle To   Stop Intrusive Thoughts   Why I praise God For   Intrusive Thoughts     A Christian Testimony     Anyone wanting to stop intrusive thoughts must understand that like ants at a picnic, unwanted, offensive thoughts invade everyone’s minds and annoy us all. To stop intrusive thoughts completely is beyond human power, but our reaction determines how much they dominate our lives.   When walking over an ant nest, most of us pay little attention and move on. A different approach, however, could seriously worsen things. If an ant bites as you are walking over a nest and you stop where you are to fight the ant, stomping your foot to try to jolt it off, other ants will swarm and start attacking you. What would have been a minor annoyance turns into a frenzied attack. The more you panic and try to stomp on every ant, the more bites you’ll receive. Something minor escalates into something serious and you may wonder why you are so viciously attacked while others walk through the same area with hardly a bite.   So it is with intrusive thoughts. Most of us dismiss disgusting, unwanted thoughts and mental images as just an annoying fact of life, and move on. Some of us, however, panic and stop in our tracks to try to fight them off, but this very act intensifies the attack.   To change the analogy, intrusive thoughts are like an itch that remains minor if you ignore it but becomes increasingly serious the more you scratch it. Just as it is not easy to ignore an itch and act as if it were not happening, so it is not easy for us to remain calm and unconcerned when attacked by ugly intrusive thoughts, but it is the only way to stop them getting worse.   I am so proud to call Angela my sister in Christ because she clings by faith to the forgiving power of Christ and refuses to give in to false feelings of shame, no matter how strong and oppressive those feelings are. It takes immense, Christ-honoring faith to resist all the fear, false guilt and screaming doubts as Angela does.   We’ll start with the first e-mail Angela sent me and I’ll comment from time to time.   Grantley Morris Founder of Netburst.net   The Testimony   I couldn’t stop myself from crying tears of relief while reading your encouraging webpage. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted, knowing that it’s not my fault for thinking such bad things. You’ve really touched my heart.   I’ve just turned 20, and I remember the first time I had these thoughts. I was about 12 or 13. After a family friend told me about the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, my mind kept making me think such sentences as, “The Holy Spirit is from the Devil,” “Jesus is of the Devil,” and so on. Horrified, I thought for sure that I had just signed my spiritual death certificate, condemning myself to hell. I cried almost uncontrollably. I finally confessed to my dad what I was thinking and he assured me that it was something called intrusive thoughts. Above anything in the world, my biggest fear is being unforgiven by God. I now realize that it is precisely because this is my greatest fear that I found myself repeatedly thinking the worst possible thoughts.   After my dad told me it wasn’t my fault, the thoughts went away for several years.   Comment by Grantley:  This link between Angela’s relief and the fading of the thoughts is highly significant. Angela believed her father so much that her anxiety over the thoughts disappeared. As explained in  Scrupulosity: Religious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,  intrusive thoughts feed off anxiety. The more you fear them, the more they will keep invading your mind. Having no fear or anxiety to feed off, the unwanted thoughts died down, like a fire starved of oxygen.   Over time, however, it is common for doubts to creep back so that we begin once again to worry that such thoughts might be a terrifyingly serious offense against God. When this fear begins to resurface, rather than just dismiss the thoughts as harmless annoyances, we will frantically try to fight them again. As we panic, the unwanted thoughts will begin to swarm and attack, as surely as stomping on an ant nest. We enter an ever-worsening vicious circle in which anxiety causes the thoughts, which in turn increase our anxiety. So I’m not the slightest surprised that Angela continues:   Since a couple years ago intrusive thoughts have started to come back but in a different way. I’ve tried to get closer to Jesus, but when I did, I started thinking really icky things that I’ve been too ashamed to admit to anyone before. After reading your webpage, however, I know that it’s more common than I thought. I’m by no means the only devoted Christian who thinks unclean things about my Lord and Savior. I still detest the thoughts, of course, but now I know there’s hope.   You’ve really taken a big weight off my shoulders. I hope that now I can become closer to God without my intrusive thoughts.   Comment by Grantley:  If Angela no longer fears the thoughts, they will indeed fade away. Nevertheless, the goal must never be the avoidance of blasphemous thoughts. The harder we try to avoid them, the worse they will get. The goal must always and only be to by faith draw near to God. We do this by clinging to the fact that through the power of Christ’s sacrifice we are accepted by God, no matter what thoughts invade our minds and no matter how much our conscience accuses us.   People write to me hoping God will stop their intrusive thoughts. That’s like hoping God will stop us from ever being tempted, despite the fact that Jesus himself suffered severe temptation. What glory is there in being able to survive when not under attack? Our chance for glory comes when we cling to Christ by faith despite being under such strong attack that everything within us screams that Christ has fled from us in horror.   No one is forgiven because intrusive thoughts no longer occur, nor because of the smallness of his or her sin, but solely because of the greatness of the forgiving power of Christ trading places with us on the cross.   Angela continues:   I take delight knowing that I’m throwing a major wrench in Satan’s plan. Here’s why: I kind of consider my intrusive thoughts a blessing because if I never had them, I never would have looked it up online, and I probably wouldn’t have found NetBurst.Net and I don’t think I would have as good an understanding of how loving and forgiving God is.   It was with a tear stained smile of thankfulness that I jumped at the chance to e-mail Grantley, author of this website. The website has really changed my life, and now I’m closer to God, with more understanding of his love and forgiveness, and I’m getting to know Jesus more than I have ever before.   So instead of making me doubt the power of Christ’s sacrifice, and doubt the love and forgiveness of God, those intrusive thoughts have only driven me closer to God! Having realized that there is so much more hope than I thought there was, I’m much less afraid. I used to feel that I had to live my life perfectly or I’d fall under the judgment of God. Naturally, I want to do what is right, but I now understand that God’s acceptance of me depends not on my futile attempts to be perfect but solely on me trusting the perfection of Christ’s sacrifice for me.   I’ve realized that the most valuable thing we can possibly attain is totally free to anyone who accepts it: Jesus’ sacrifice.   I told my dad about how Satan’s plan backfired and caused me to be closer to God. He agreed and said to watch out, though, because now that I’ve pushed that in Satan’s face, he’s going to try a different attack. Satan might, for example, try a fleshly temptation.   Comment by Grantley:  Angela’s dad is right that the devil is a sore loser and is sure to counter-attack. My experience with people, however, strongly suggests that when the enemy has had a little success with upsetting someone through a particular tactic, he doesn’t change tactics quickly. In other words, I expect Angela to be repeatedly tested in the realm of intrusive thoughts before the devil reluctantly gives up, and even then he will try sneak attacks from time to time.   The intrusive thoughts that kept coming to Angela involved the use of foul, sexually explicit swear words aimed at defiling Jesus. It is not just words, however, but mental images of degrading Jesus physically and sexually in the most atrocious matter. All of this is totally out of character for Angela.   Uncontrollable thoughts reveal how anxious a person is  not  to think such things. They indicate not how bad a person is, but that how good the person is, in that they show that the person is unusually desperate not to think such things.   To better understand what drives devoted Christians to think filthy, obscene things about their Lord, let’s consider a common, non-religious example of people who suffer from intrusive thoughts. It is more common than most people realize for loving mothers with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to be unable to stop thinking of mutilating and killing their babies with a knife. They are not just upsetting thoughts; these mothers are terrified that they will actually act out those thoughts on the babies they love. Experts insist that such people would never in reality endanger anyone. The uncontrollable nature of these unwanted thoughts, however, often fools these people into mistakenly thinking that they would sink so low as to harm, or even kill, their children. These horrific thoughts keep plaguing them precisely because the thoughts cause these mothers immense distress. And they cause such distress precisely because the thoughts are totally out of character and the last thing they would ever want to do.   Likewise, Christians with a tendency towards Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can suffer hideous thoughts about Christ, precisely because it is completely out of character and the last thing they would ever want to do. Like sweet, non-violent mothers who needlessly fear – and even come to believe – that they have transmuted into virtual monsters, anyone relentlessly subjected to barrages of intrusive thoughts is likely to become so confused as to conclude that such thinking really is part of his/her true character.   In the  previous webpage  in this series, we saw that 1 Corinthians 10:13 implies that our first line of defense when undergoing spiritual attack is the knowledge that many other Christians have suffered similar attacks. This knowledge is such a source of strength that the enemy of our souls usually tries his hardest to fool each of us into thinking that no Christian has done such wicked things as we have. It is to help counteract this lie that Angela has selflessly specified the exact nature of the appalling thoughts and images that have plagued her.   As explained elsewhere in this series, this should be unnecessary, because the Bible insists that Jesus died for the sins of the world – for every sin ever committed on the entire planet. So unless you are in another part of the galaxy using alien technology to hack into earth’s computers, Jesus died for the forgiveness of every sin you have ever committed. Forgiveness is yours, provided you don’t die before believing Jesus for that forgiveness. Only if you don’t believe Jesus for forgiveness, is a sin unforgivable.   So why do I bother writing all these pages when all that is needed is simple faith in the Bible? Unfortunately, people who suffer intrusive thoughts keep demanding ridiculous amounts of proof. To understand this, let’s remember that intrusive thoughts are a manifestation of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and look at another manifestation of this illness.   Many people with OCD keep repeatedly checking the same door to ensure that it is locked. Once should suffice, but not for these people. They are continually and irrationally filled with doubt about whether the door is locked. So you can expect someone with religious OCD to be repeatedly filled with doubt. Like checking a door once, whenever one doubt is removed from such a person, another doubt will come.   Out of compassion for those plagued with this insatiable need for proof, I am writing this webpage and the nearly fifty others in this series. Nevertheless, a million words will not end the doubts of anyone suffering from the medical condition known as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This affliction has been called the doubting disease. It causes the mind to keep playing tricks such that no matter how overwhelming the evidence, doubts will continue to surface. The only real answer is for anyone with OCD to accept the continual presence of doubt and guilt feelings as an unavoidable fact of life. Sadly, such people must get used to living with these disturbing feelings and stubbornly refuse to believe their feelings, including feeling that no one is as depraved as them.   Of course, just like contemplating what our loving Lord suffered at the hands of his Roman torturers, it pains not just Angela but all of us to read a description of her thoughts. As Christ’s suffering glorifies his love for us, however, so an account of her thoughts highlights his love and grace, since Angela – like anyone who regrets such thoughts and trusts Christ’s cleansing power – is accepted and pure in the eyes of the Holy One. As the cross reveals, the Pure One would endure anything, including the most depraved slander and obscenities, in order to be our best friend. Because God sees Angela’s heart and knows she wants to honor him, her unwanted thoughts have displeased  her  far more than him. He is thrilled by Angela’s refusal to let intrusive thoughts hamper her relationship with him.   Even humans can vow to be faithful “in sickness and in health.” Jesus would never distance himself from us just because we became physically ill. Likewise he will remain steadfastly with us through any mental illness. Uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts are a manifestation of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is a form of mental illness. Just as some physical illnesses can affect us without causing us to be bedridden, so this form of mental illness is not so severe as to incapacitate us, but it is an illness, nonetheless.   Writes Angela:   It is going to be  really  hard to explicitly detail my thoughts. I’ve never told anyone what my exact thoughts were. I didn’t think I could do it but with the Lord’s help I have set aside my pride and opened up my heart. I’m doing it for Jesus and my fellow Christians so that, like me, they can be inspired to get closer to God.   I can’t remember all of my gross thoughts, but having offered a heartfelt prayer for strength to do this, I’ll state what I do remember. It will be graphic, but here goes:   A couple of years ago, the anti-Holy Spirit sentences came back. I wasn’t as terrified as when I was younger because I remembered what my dad said years before, but they still scared me a lot and I needed to be reassured again that it wasn’t my fault. They went away for a little awhile, but then the really bad thoughts started coming.   Comment by Grantley:  Intrusive thoughts relentlessly target the very thing their victim least wants and most fears. So if a thought loses its power to terrorize a person, the mind – ably supported by the devil – of anyone susceptible to this mental condition will keep searching for a new thought that will alarm the person. So once the thoughts lost their power to terrify Angela it comes as no surprise that the intrusive thoughts took another form.   Horrid sentences would come to me, often associated with foul, sexually explicit language. I tried so hard to not think such things, but they just grew worse; forcing me to visualize images of Jesus engaging in indecent acts with myself or other people.   I felt extremely sick and filled with shame over these thoughts.   Comment by Grantley:  Angela boldly revealed to me all her thoughts and the language used and was willing for them to be published if they would help you. I’ve tried to tone them down a little, while still hoping to convey how extreme the thoughts are.   Angela has repeated thoughts of bodily defiling and humiliating (sexually and otherwise) the holy Son of God in ways far more disgusting and depraved than even hinted at by the Bible’s description of what Jesus suffered at the hands of the Romans. And the thoughts come with the most vulgar, sexually explicit language to describe these despicable acts. Moreover, it went far beyond words: for countless times she would vividly visualize personally doing it to her Lord.   Sentences would form in her mind, often commencing, “I want to . . .” followed by vulgar language about doing detestable, degrading things to the King of kings, or of wanting him to do it to her.   In reality, she did not want such things, but it would be easy for all victims of such a relentless attack on one’s mind to mistakenly conclude that they must really want such things, since it is within their own minds that such gross expressions keep repeating over and over and over, accompanied by appropriately vile images.   Angela continues:   I also had a few angry-sounding, foul-mouthed outbursts against God or Jesus. It made it hard to read the Bible or engage in any other Christian activities, because I was afraid the vile thoughts would start again.   Comment by Grantley:  What if Angela had not only had obscenely blasphemous thoughts and had genuinely wanted to act out those thoughts but had deliberately declared them to thousands of people in the hope of corrupting them and slandering the King of kings? The purifying power of Christ’s sacrifice is such that Angela would be utterly cleansed through a simple faith-union with Christ. Moreover, there is no reason why she could not then be powerfully used of God for the most earth-shaking and holy ministry.   I have done a little to conceal Angela’s identity and tone down what she has been willing to publish, but she concludes:   I am not afraid to let people know who I am. To hide my identity would be to say that I am ashamed, and it’s Satan who should be ashamed! He is the one who has exploited my obsessive compulsive tendencies. I now know that I have nothing to be ashamed about.   My intrusive thoughts have subsided a lot. I pray that many people suffering from intrusive thoughts are helped by knowing what my exact thoughts were and so realizing that they aren’t alone in suffering such attacks.   Trials are a blessing and a chance to deepen our faith. There is  always  a reason to praise God.   Someone Else’s Experience   Years later, I received an e-mail from Brenda in response to the above. She has kindly given me permission to share it with you. Her experience highlights other aspects of this affliction.   Recently I came across Angela’s testimony. A lot of what she went through is similar to what I’ve experienced.   A little over six months ago I came off a drug, Ambien, which is a sleeping pill. I had been on it for three years every night, but I heard it can have a lot of bad effects, especially on women. I experienced withdrawals, and started having severe panic and anxiety attacks. (I also went through some physical problems as well). From then I started having horrible blasphemous thoughts. I am a Christian and my heart’s desire is to serve the Lord and to do his will in my live and to be an example to my children, family and others.   Comment by Grantley:  The timing is no coincidence. Over time, Brenda’s body had adjusted to the sleeping pill to the point of being so dependent upon it that stopping it threw her body chemistry out of whack. (It is always best to seek medical advice before stopping any medication. Often one is advised to stop only gradually. She should probably have started the cut-back by taking half a pill for a while.) This imbalance caused the anxiety attacks and Brenda’s intrusive thoughts were anxiety-driven. It is a medical issue, not a spiritual one. It has taken a spiritual form only because spiritual things are so important to Brenda.   Like Angela, these are horrible, sexual thoughts about the Godhead. They have tormented me.   Comment by Grantley:  This is only because Brenda  let  the thoughts be a source of torment. Had she regarded them as simply a product of withdrawing from sleeping pills and of having no spiritual consequence, life would have been much easier for her. Like trying to fight a swarm of bees with a sword, trying to fight the thoughts will achieve nothing except stir them into an even greater frenzy.   I pray, read the Bible, listen to tapes of messages to and from work, quote scriptures, and at times it will be better but doesn’t last they come back worse and they are so vile and disgusting they make me sick! I know this is not me. I would never think such thoughts and they are opposite of what’s in my heart!   It makes you feel lost even though in your heart you know that you are saved, but because you’re a Christian you can’t imagine how one can think such horrible thoughts about the Holy God and Savior you love so much.   Comment by Grantley:  Brenda’s bewilderment over how a Christian can think such things is because she does not understand anxiety and how the mind works. For example, it often takes the form of new mothers being hounded by thoughts of harming their newborn. The reason is twofold:   1.     Depression and anxiety are closely linked, and it is well known that new mothers often suffer postnatal depression.   2.     Because harming their baby is the last thing these dear mothers want, their very fear of the thought worsens the situation. They try hard  not  to think such things, which means they will inevitably think of them because they are focusing on those very thoughts.     Only a few family members know what I’ve been going through. They have prayed for me numerous times and my husband as well, but I don’t think they know the depth of how disturbing this is to me.   Comment by Grantley:  I agree that others don’t understand how upsetting it is to Brenda. This is because she worries about it far more than is necessary and this very concern inflames the situation.   I want to be set free to live in God’s peace and joy.   Comment by Grantley:  In Find Peace in the Storm I have proved by an extensive biblical examination that peace and joy are not spiritual drugs. Like the other fruit of the Spirit, they are virtues, and necessitate much persistence and stubborn faith – grimly holding on when everything within wants to panic and give up.   If Brenda’s anxiety levels were to lessen (and her best chance of that is through medication), her unwanted thoughts would lessen but, to be honest, I hope the trial continues because this is Brenda’s opportunity to grow spiritually – an opportunity that few people have on this level. I believe God loves her too much not to allow this to continue so that she can become truly strong in her faith that God is love, compassionate and cleanses us from all sin. We  think  we believe these things but it is only during such a trial that we truly get the chance to exercise strong faith in these glorious truths. When all the props of feelings and signs are stripped away and we are left to cling on to Christ by raw faith alone, we are amazed to discover how weak we really are, but just as someone running a marathon feels weak towards the end of the race – even though the mere fact that he is still plodding on shows he is actually super-strong – so it is when we are forced to hold on by sheer faith. We will feel pathetically weak even though the fact that we are still holding on to Christ shows that we are strong. Like any exercise, with spiritual exercise it is a case of no pain, no gain.   I try to ignore them but that doesn’t seem to work very well, when something horrible comes in my mind I immediately try to push it out of my head and think on something good and holy, such as quote a scripture. There are times it’s so bad I just break down and cry uncontrollably because I don’t want these horrible thoughts in my head. I pray and it gets better until the next time it comes back and starts all over again. I want to be delivered and set free I feel like all I do is pray for myself for God to deliver me.   Comment by Grantley:  Like so many of us, Brenda is praying for the wrong thing. Instead, she should praise God for his love and understanding and for the fact that because of Jesus he is on her side and totally believes in her. She should thank God for this opportunity to grow in faith and to learn to rest in him.   I appreciate any encouragement and thoughts you can share.   Comment by Grantley:  That’s what this entire website is all about. It is most important that Brenda read  Scrupulosity: Worried about Salvation, Blasphemous Thoughts & Severe Guilt Feelings  and then keep following for very many pages the main link towards the bottom of each page. All of us who suffer like Brenda have a strong mental bias to approach this problem in a way that will keep making it worse. We are strongly biased to miss what the pages are clearly saying. This makes it vital that we keep prayerfully  studying  these pages until we eventually get it. It would be helpful if Brenda’s friends, loved ones, counsellors, etc also read these pages because then they will be better equipped to understand what she is suffering from and how to support her.   More Help Needed People keep e-mailing me, desperate for a quick fix so that they can get the relief they crave without having to read all these webpages. They are wasting their time and mine, however, because in all my years of anguished prayer and fervent seeking, I have failed to find an alternative to having to keep reading all these webpages. Take a rest now, if required, but you will need to read more.

Hope When There is No Hope   Hebrews 10:26-29  For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses: Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? (KJV) A woman confesses to apparently supernaturally receiving condemning Scriptures proving her to be an enemy of God beyond the forgiving power of Christ’s sacrifice. As if confirming her damnation, this sent her mental state deteriorating alarmingly for years, until finally her breakthrough commenced. Memorable Quotes From this Webpage   The Crisis   “I had gone to the Word to find answers and comfort, yet all I found was one of the most condemning and fearful words that God ever recorded.”   “I gripped at my blanket as great pains and cries seared through me. I felt the weight of darkness, hopelessness, utter black. It was as if a chasm of eternity separated me from God.”   “In a matter of six weeks I lost twenty pounds and no one could figure out what was happening to me. Nor could I!”   “My thoughts became utterly despicable. I could not stop them. It seemed that my heart was cursing God over and over. At brief moments I would have a spark of sanity, but for the next year and a half I did nothing else but cry out to God. The mental torment was beyond description.”   “My heart never stopped pounding for weeks. If I spoke, people could recognize the fear in my quivering voice. I had given up hoping this condition would ever change. I could not find peace in life, and to choose death just meant that hell would come quicker.”   “There was a force inside that would not allow belief to stick. It was like one of those dreams where you are trying to run but your legs won’t carry you.”   The Breakthrough   “I have found a new peace with God that is not based on my feelings, but solely on his Word. And when even Scripture seems to condemn me, I think of the cross. . . . When Satan attacks, I am more armed with Scripture, and have gained a better understanding of the haunting verses that would have previously torn me to pieces.”   “What kind of a God would withhold salvation to a soul so desperate to receive it? Not our God! He is mighty to save, and I know he saved me (and is saving me). I must cling to his promises and rest solely in grace through faith in Christ alone. Yes, I did have a wayward walk, full of hypocrisy and deceit. . . . Instead of wishing I had remained in Christ from the start, I need to embrace what God can do with any one of his children, even with their disobedient journeys. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing.” Full Testimony   Three years ago I dealt with a spiritual oppression and darkness that produced shocks of suffering that I feared would never end. I remember thinking that if I ever “got better” I wanted to share my testimony on this website in the hope that it would minister to another burdened soul on this earth. I am so grateful for this website, and for the Lord leading me to find it.   It wasn’t until I was a young teenager that I was told the Gospel and believed. I remember crying to Jesus to forgive and save me. For about three years I thought of Jesus continually and developed a relationship with him. However, I did not stay on that path. I chose to leave the only Christian community I knew in order to chase the world. I started drinking and having fun. It lasted for the next ten years. I still went to Church (sometimes hung-over). I dated a strong Christian for years, but often drank behind his back. Eventually I told him I wanted to be more involved in church and I wanted Christian friends (my friends at the time were known for being “party” girls). He helped me join a Bible Study. I was trying to seek the Lord, but my heart was also seeking after the flesh and I would continue to party until a few years after graduation.   During that whole time I claimed the title of a “Christian,” but there was an obvious contradiction. I continually justified sinful behavior and my faith was largely hypocrisy. I was so off the path that I just could not seem to trust God’s ways, so I had confidence in my own choices instead. Slowly I was spiralling down. I knew the better way, but I would not choose it fully. There is that saying that we have two dogs in us that are always battling; a good dog and a bad dog. And people ask, “What dog wins?” The answer is, “Whichever one you feed.” Well, I fed the bad dog. And before long I was on anti-depressants and had completely fallen apart.   My boyfriend and I broke up. I barely knew God at all. I was depressed, hardened, confused. I immersed myself in work, friends and beer, over-eating, and just about anything else that had nothing to do with the Lord.   About two years later, in his wonderful mercy, God graciously whispered to my soul that he was worth knowing and pursuing and loving. I finally saw through the lies and turned back to God. He immediately provided everything I needed. I was given new and wonderful Christian friends. I was in a solid Bible Study with amazing, godly women who served the Lord and truly loved him. I was offered a new job that tremendously helped my faith grow. It took some time, but the Lord took away so many of the desires I once had for popularity, drinking and worldly success. I experienced so much light and transformation. I was serving, loved my church, and was madly in love with my Savior. Life had never been better. I was so filled with the Spirit that I would often sob tears of joy.   Confusion   After a few years, Satan began creeping into my life and had me confused about my salvation. When did I get saved? As a teenager? Would my life have gone down that path of sin had I truly been a believer? Why hadn’t I had a grand transformation? Was this new faith and new “me” just behavior modification? These thoughts were constant, but they did not bring me down. It was merely a tactic of Satan that the Lord used for good. It prompted more time in Scripture, prayer, and seeking the Lover of my soul. I had my questions and doubts, but was happy to speak to my Lord about them, and ask for clarity. Many times he gave it to me. I knew he was working in my life. I saw many evidences of it.   One time I had been seeking the assurance of God’s grace through prayer. In the middle of the night I woke up instantly to a voice speaking very clearly. It said, “Love keeps no record of wrongs.” I laid there in wonder and fear and curiosity. I was still half asleep. I did, however, ask the Lord if that was him. (The phrase was familiar but I could not recall whether it was a popular saying or from Scripture.) I fell back to sleep without an answer and woke up not even remembering this event. That morning when I arrived at work, my sweet Christian friend stopped in my office to chat, as we did this most mornings. Out of nowhere she said to me, “For some reason God’s words, ‘Love keeps no record of wrongs,’ keeps coming to me.” Immediately I remembered being awakened in the night. I asked her if that was a Bible verse. She said it was from Corinthians. Oh yes! I remembered that! The God of love declares that love keeps no record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5, NIV). And he has set it in black and white for the whole world to see. I praised the Lord for his amazing love and grace, and for being so tender and intimate with me in this way.   Doubts Deepen   However, Satan was at work as well, and his tactics grew stronger and stronger. My doubts began to deepen. Scripture began to haunt me. I began questioning God’s love for me (again), but for the most part, my questions to other people were normal (“Do you ever have doubts that you are saved?” etc.), and many times I’d get the reply, “Oh, I have wondered the same things.”   In October of 2009, I literally watched my uncle pass from life to death. I was so distraught at the look in his eyes that I was unable to cry or react to what I had just seen. My unfading thought was, “Where is he now?” Although he expressed knowledge of Jesus, I had doubts that he was a saved man, and I still wondered if I was saved. I wanted a definite answer for my own soul, so I went home, opened up my Bible, and my eyes instantly fell upon Hebrews 10:26-27, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.” I had gone to the Word to find answers and comfort, yet all I found was one of the most condemning and fearful words that God ever recorded.   I don’t know how to accurately convey what befell me at the moment of reading that verse. In a matter of seconds, I was completely paralyzed on my couch. The physical effects that fear manifests consumed me; the heaviness, sweats, inability to speak, the tingly sensation on every inch of my body, the piercing silence . . . You name it; I was its victim. I lay as prey on that sofa. The next thing I recall was throwing my body across my bed and groaning. I gripped at my blanket as great pains and cries seared through me. I felt the weight of darkness, hopelessness, utter black. It was as if a chasm of eternity separated me from God. There was not one molecule of light in an expanse of eternal blackness. Every sin, every blasphemous thought, every weakness, my impurities, self-righteousness; my whole life lay bare before me. And in that place, that moment, I knew that NOTHING in this world could ever save me from what I deserved, nothing but Jesus Christ. I knew in that moment that I was a sinner – not because I committed sins, but because that is what I was. I wailed every last drop of repentant thought to God and screamed aloud for his forgiveness. “What have I done?!” This mantra of words in my head kept repeating and repeating and repeating. I don’t know how long this lasted; all I do know is I found zero relief. And without that relief, I was certain that it was because God had disapproved of me, and I was forever condemned.   All the sexual sins of my past and party days were brought to my attention. Over and over Satan told me that I was not forgiven. These sins count against me. He used that verse to prove it was true. I had kept on sinning after knowing Jesus. And in black texts were the words from God that proved that no more sacrifice was left. I was truly going to hell.   God did not rescue me. It seemed as though he left me right there, in that spot, and with that frame of mind for months to come. I believed that I had repented, but my feelings did not change and no rescue came from my Lord. This condition remained for countless, unrelenting and horrendous days. In a matter of six weeks I lost twenty pounds and no one could figure out what was happening to me. Nor could I! (I was too ashamed and fearful to admit the blasphemous thoughts and doubts of salvation and God’s love) so I did everything in my power to act normal and put on a smile.   At times I would talk to my friends about what I was feeling or thinking, but I downplayed it tremendously. My thoughts became utterly despicable. I could not stop them. It seemed that my heart was cursing God over and over. At brief moments I would have a spark of sanity, but for the next year and a half I did nothing else but cry out to God. The mental torment was beyond description. I knew that God’s Word was true. I believed Jesus was Savior, and Lord of Lords and King of Kings. I still believed God was love. He claims to be, so I believed him, but at the same time I didn’t believe because I just didn’t think he was those things for  me , and so could not believe he would forgive  me . There was a force inside that would not allow belief to stick. It was like one of those dreams where you are trying to run but your legs won’t carry you – you know how to run, but it just became impossible. That is how my thoughts were. I knew what I believed and what was true, but I could not get those thoughts to stick in my mind. It was like they bounced off some empty cavity in my brain and then eroded away.   I once heard a man say that his eyes were opened to the spiritual world and he saw demons; some the size of buildings. I was certain that if my predicament was caused by that dominion, my demon was the size of a skyscraper. But worse, if the torment was just my wicked and depraved heart and mind, I was beyond all hope and out of the realm of forgiveness and an eternity with the One I loved (yet now believing that perhaps I didn’t love him, or never did). And what did that matter since I thought myself to be unpardonable?   Things Worsen   Early in the mornings I was so certain that the sun was not going to rise. I would wait and wait for light to shine on this world. I feared that it had truly stopped because of me. I eventually became a hermit, for the most part. I still went to work, but as soon as the day was done, I would drive home and get in bed and read anything I could to find relief. My bed was covered with books and commentaries. If I did open my Bible, I would read anything, and it afflicted me. It was so intense that I thought I was the great prostitute mentioned in  Revelation . God says that he will come when you least expect him to, so I thought he had already returned and I was left in this prison of hell forever.   My whole physical being was consumed by the torment. I had dry, cotton mouth every day. My heart never stopped pounding for weeks. If I spoke, people could recognize the fear in my quivering voice. I had given up hoping this condition would ever change. I could find no peace in life, and to choose death just meant that hell would come quicker. Many nights I would just say, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” over and over until I fell asleep. Even those words, and that act, gave me no respite; just more fear, since the Great Shepherd clearly was not mine.   I eventually went to counselling at church. It was unsuccessful. I had been prayed over numerous times. A friend of my mother’s tried casting out demons. I tried other counsellors and therapists. I was still acting very nonchalant about the severity of what I was really going through, so what I portrayed to other people looked very different from my reality. I thought maybe I had a brain tumor so I went to a medical doctor and mentioned that I had extreme anxiety, heart palpitations, and weight loss. The doctor thought it could be a contribution from my thyroid. It was not. I talked to my pastor about that verse in Hebrews (when of course by this time I had read every commentary on it) and he reassured me that verse did not apply to me. I disagreed and found no comfort in his counsel.   I had considered checking myself in to a facility. I could not take it anymore. But then the thought of being trapped in one stopped me. Soon after, in desperation, I ran out of my workplace to an Urgent Care Center and refused leave without something that would ease my anxiety. Medication was the last thing I wanted to do, but for close to a year I had held on but, it seemed to no avail. If God was not going to come through and deliver me, then I would try medication in the hope of at least functioning better, and perhaps my uncontrollable thoughts would stop.   After just a few days, the medication did wonders to help. I felt a little more in control of my mind. My thoughts seemed less intrusive and I actually did social things with some friends. However, the fear of being on medication began to reach new heights so I discontinued them.   Relief Short-Lived   Whenever I would think my doubts and thoughts were improving, something else would happen. One day, while I was home alone, I felt an eerie presence. I was not feeling safe. It was a beautiful day so I went outside to be in some light and feel the fresh air (I often disliked being outdoors anymore because every speck of creation reminded me that it was God’s – the God who couldn’t love me – and it only added to my fears). While outside I happened to glance up on the roof and saw about fifteen black buzzards lined up next to each other. Their wings were all outstretched. It was as if they were hovering over my home like evil spirits to torment me. I went back inside, still so desperate, and I opened my Bible and read some verse in Isaiah that mentioned ravens and buzzards and dry land and terrifying judgment for God’s enemies (which, of course I thought I was). What are the chances of opening a Bible and your eyes landing on that?! I believe a demon must have had his finger in place, eager for me to open God’s Word at that precise spot. I called a friend and went right over. I said I was afraid to be alone (but gave her some silly made-up reason why) and laughed it off.   I wanted to be anyone but me. I was certain that no soul on earth had ever experienced anything quite like this, or was as sinful as me. I had read testimonies about doubt and fears, but they were all light and easy readings. I read about Bunyan and was thrilled he was a man who mentioned similar things, but he had deliverance in an instant. Where was mine? So no matter what, even testimonies condemned me.   Hope At Last   That was until I found the testimonies on this website! It was the first time I felt some relief. I felt comfort knowing that I was not alone and that some believers had related experiences. I could identify with others, FINALLY. I read testimony after testimony. I printed out pages and pages of Grantley’s writings, and read them over and over and over. Every spare minute I would read scriptures on forgiveness, grace, and love, and even though my brain would not “connect” to anything, I still read it. I never  felt  any different, but Grantley, author of these NetBurst.net webpages, reassured me that faith is not a feeling. I had to base everything on what God says. If as the Bible keeps saying, he forgives; if the God of love keeps no record of wrongs, then he could still forgive me. For so long, this website is what got me functioning again.   It has been a very slow recovery. I still battle doubts and fears, but looking back, I know these fears and doubts were from Satan because now my mind cannot even conceive of many of those thoughts. I cannot come up with them on my own! They must have been planted there by a force so strong and so evil.   Gently and gradually, the Lord has delivered me. Praise God. That dark time in my life is not something I’ve come to understand fully. Nevertheless, I am eternally grateful that through it the Lord revealed to me the self-righteousness I had (and still fight). He revealed to me the utter depravity of my soul and my desperate need for him as Savior. I know that I cannot earn anything from God. It’s all Jesus, or nothing. I cannot contribute to what he did, but my flesh still thinks in terms that I can. I still fight the worry that I have not found that narrow way that he says only a few find. In other words, I still have to resist slipping into to the mistaken belief that the way is created by me, not by him.   Nevertheless, I have found a new peace with God that is not based on my feelings, but solely on his Word. And when even Scripture seems to condemn me, I think of the cross. The OCD thoughts and obsessions have mostly disappeared. When Satan attacks, I am more armed with Scripture, and have gained a better understanding of the haunting verses that would have previously torn me to pieces.   What kind of a God would withhold salvation to a soul so desperate to receive it? Not our God! He is mighty to save, and I know he saved me (and is saving me). I must cling to his promises and rest solely in grace through faith in Christ alone. Yes, I did have a wayward walk, full of hypocrisy and deceit. It took a long time to start dying to self, putting off sin, and living for the one who gave himself for me. Instead of lamenting that I had remained in Christ from the start, I need to embrace what God can do with any one of his children, even with their disobedient journeys. Forgiveness is a beautiful thing. Although I relate so well to  Jars of Clay  when they sing, “It takes all I am to believe in the mercy that covers me,” I hope to never go back to that place of unbelief again. May the Lord graciously assist me in my heart’s desires to press forward, glorifying his Almighty Name, Jesus Christ our Lord.   Grantley’s Comment   I was thrilled about how effective medication was for this dear woman. Usually, medication takes longer before it begins to help, and often it is necessary to try several classes of medication until the most effective one for the particular individual is found. It is sadly ironic, however, that her anxiety manifested itself in an irrational fear of the very thing that was helping to lower her anxiety.   If you worry about taking anti-depressants, despite them helping, I urge you to persist with taking them under medical supervision. To refuse medication is as irrational as someone with a vitamin deficiency refusing to take extra vitamins. The very fact that medication helps, is confirmation that the problem has a physical component to it.   Here’s a Scripture that has much to teach us:   1 Corinthians 10:13  No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.   To worry about one’s salvation is to be tempted to doubt God’s love and the power of Christ’s sacrifice. The above Scripture makes no promise that God will remove the temptation; only that God will provide (it is up to us to avail ourselves of that provision) the way that will enable us to “stand up under it.” We will still be “under it” but we will survive. Likewise, medication will not eliminate the temptation; it will merely reduce the temptation to levels that are a little easier to resist. God provided the “way out” in the form of medication. If we are too proud or fearful to accept God’s “way out” there is no guarantee that he will provide an additional one, even though he eventually did for this woman. Remember the story of the man forced on to the roof because of rising flood waters. A boat and then a helicopter came to rescue him but he refused, certain that God would rescue him. Finally he drowned, went to heaven, and complained that God had not rescued him, only to discover that it was God who had sent the boat and the helicopter.   To be too proud to take God’s “way out” of medication would be like leprous Naaman being too proud to dip in the River Jordan in order to receive God’s healing (2 Kings 5:1-14). On the other hand, to take medication is to boldly step out in faith, affirming that God is not behind the doubts and that anything that helps fight doubt is pleasing to God.   You Need More To be haunted by guilt feelings, spiritual worries and repulsive thoughts is like trying to drive safely through traffic in the midst of continual distractions. This website has the vast number of webpages you need in order to stay focused. Read them daily. Next Testimony Grace Not Works Important: Get your pastor and those who care about you to read Scrupulosity  and the pages it leads to. Few will be able to understand and support you without reading them. The Beginning The only way to not miss any of this feast of uplifting webpages about false guilt is to start at Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope!   and follow each link. You won't regret it! Feeling Rejected by God  An important part of this series of webpages Unforgivable?   The part of the series that deals with the unforgivable sin Testimonies   They thought they were unforgivable