Category: Walking With God

“How do you feel when you think about a world of people being led astray by the devil holding them captive?”

One of my brothers in Christ recently challenged me with this question. I haven’t responded to him until now. While this post is in response to him, I wanted to write it in a public forum, that my response may be shared with the rest of you. This is an important question for Christians to answer, and responding to the question publicly is one of the best ways I know to share what we believe, as well as to grow personally.

The first thing I remember when considering this question is that being led astray by Satan is completely expected, and is very normal. In fact, everyone has been led astray by Satan at some point. We have all sinned, and because of our sin, we have all fallen short of the glory of the Holy God (Romans 3:23). What else should we expect when we consider that we’re dealing with the prince of the world (John 16:11)? Jeremiah 17:9 in the New King James Version states “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?”. John 3:19 states “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil”. Once does not need to look very far into the past or present events of our world to see Satan’s hold on humanity playing out over and over and over again. How do I feel about a world of people being led astray by the devil holding them captive? I certainly don’t feel good. I think it would be amazing if it wasn’t happening. But I honestly wouldn’t expect anything less.

This is important to clarify. Our time, our effort, and our energy is limited – there is only so much feeling and so much caring that we can do. There is only so much Michael Good to go around – what can I do about an entire world?

Now, there are many instances where God has used “one man” to make a difference for the entire world. Look at Peter and the apostle Paul. Look at St. Patrick, Martin Luther, Menno Simons, or C.S. Lewis. Clearly, if I were called by God to say or do something that would change the world, it wouldn’t be the first or (almost certainly) the last time that God calls literally just one person to say or do something that would change the way Christ is understood and venerated for generations to come. However, short of a calling from God and an empowerment through His Holy Spirit, I don’t like my odds of reaching an entire world. Realistically the scope to which I am called will likely be more localized.

Realistically the Scope to Which I Am Called Will Likely Be more Localized

I live in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I’ve lived in this area my whole life, and have many friends, peers and family members around me. Thus far, I have not discerned a call from God to be elsewhere – and so, until then, I presume that God has called me to be right here. I know the language, I know the culture, and I know the people. If this is where God has called me to be, then this is where my “only so much Michael Good” should be going around. And the Holy Spirit will work through me to accomplish the will of the Father in Heaven.

As it stands, I have a number of friends, peers, and family members who would fit into category of people being led astray by the devil. I have close people who I’ve heard state “God will understand” when they stand in judgment before Him. I have close people who I’ve heard state “Jesus was a really good person”, without acknowledging His sacrifice for the redemption of our sins. I have close people who I’ve heard state “God wouldn’t send anyone to hell”. I have close people who know have thought “I’m not going to church because Christians in churches are mostly posers”. I’ve had close people who I’ve heard state “What’s important at the end of the day is that you have something you believe in”. I know people who I’ve heard state “I don’t think it’s possible to know the truth about God from our perspective”.

Some of those mentioned call themselves Christians. Some of those mentioned who call themselves Christians actually really are Christians. And others call themselves unbelievers. At the time that I recall the conversations happening, all were being led astray by the devil. Many of them were being held captive. And many of them are in the same spot today that they were in when we last spoke on the subject.

Here I am, a professing Christian; here I am, a professing believer in the one true and Holy God; here I am, professing that Jesus is the Christ, that Jesus is the Messiah, and that Jesus is the one and only begotten son of God. One cannot in good faith and in good knowledge honestly make such a profession without also coming to the conclusion that this is the single most important thing they do with their lives. If this is the single most important thing I do with my life, shouldn’t everything I do and say be based on and around this? And since everything I do and say is based on this, shouldn’t I tell everyone I meet about this, and shouldn’t those close to me notice something is different with me than with everyone else? I know that over time the Holy Spirit has changed me to be a better reflection of who Christ is (1st John 4:17), and though I know I will certainly never be a perfect reflection of Him, I pray that He continues to refine me into His image. Well, am I telling the people I meet about who Jesus is and about the truth recorded in the Bible? Do those close to me notice something is different about me compared to those who aren’t Christians?

You know what really does bother me? Based on what I know, many of my friends, peers, and family members are going to hell. You know how it makes me feel knowing that some of the things I do and say may be a part of their decision? You know how it makes me feel knowing that some of the things I don’t do or say may be a part of their decision? You know how I feel when I think I may inadvertently be playing into the devil leading any of you astray or holding any of you captive? You know how I feel about this? I feel completely and utterly devastated by this.

---

Well then, you should ask. Dear Michael Good, I see you laughing and making jokes. I see you getting your sleep at night. How can you be content when you’re not warning me I’m going to hell every time you’re seeing me? How do you look at yourself in the mirror? How do you live with yourself?

I’ll tell you how: It is not because of me that you are saved. And it is not because of me that you may have a better understanding of who Jesus is. I, Michael Good, am not the one who saves you. And I, Michael Good, am an impulsive, reckless dolt (clever as I may be) who has no business bettering anyone’s understanding of who Jesus is or what the Bible teaches. Instead, it is because of the work God is doing in your life, and it is because of His call on you. If I am at all a part of your redemption, or if I am at all a part of you better understanding of who Jesus is or what the Bible teaches, it is not because of me, but it is because of the Holy Spirit working through me.

It Is Because of the Holy Spirit Working through Me

What do I mean when I say it is because of the Holy Spirit working through me?

All those who believe in the resurrection of Jesus and who have called on His name to be saved have the Holy Spirit living in them. This is something that unbelievers are often mystified by, something that mature believers struggle to not take for granted, and something that is most apparent and most joyfully received by new believers who often suddenly change in temperament from who they were before, sometimes in very stark and noticeable ways. A good example of what the Holy Spirit does to a Christian is to look at Peter before the Holy Spirit – the man who chopped off soldier’s ears (John 18:10) and thought it was a good idea to make tents for Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:4) and denied Christ three times (Luke 22:61) – and compare it with Peter after the Holy Spirit – the man who preached to the Jews at Pentecost, some of whom may have even been among those who crucified Jesus (Acts 2:13), called early Christians to prepare their minds for action while being sober-minded (1st Peter 1:13), and as is commonly accepted by church tradition, was himself crucified upside-down for his faith in Jesus.

It is because of the Holy Spirit that, while I am concerned about how others are hearing the words I say and seeing the actions I take while knowing that I am a Christian, I am not overly worried about either one. I know I have received the same Spirit that the disciples received in Luke 12:11-12 when Jesus told His disciples that the Holy Spirit would teach them what to say before synagogues and rulers at the moment they needed to say it. It is through the same Holy Spirit that I have my hope and confidence that I may be ready both in-season and out-of-season as Paul charges Timothy to be in 2 Timothy 4:2 to preach the word, and to reprove, rebuke, and exhort believers and unbelievers that God brings through my life. It is through this Holy Spirit that I trust that God is revealing to you what things He needs to be revealed to you through the reading of this post.

---

So, how do you feel when you think about a world of people being led astray by the devil holding them captive? If it were solely up to me and my own efforts, I would feel completely overwhelmed and totally crushed. This is not a task I am equipped to accomplish. Those who know me well should readily attest to my recurring rashness, my occasional laziness, and my frequent need to ask for forgiveness. But, I feel substantially better knowing that I am an instrument in the hands of God the father, that I am following the call of Jesus the son, and that the work I have been called to do is being completed by the Holy Spirit. In this I can be ultimately at peace – I do not shy away from confessing Jesus to be the Christ, I pray the Holy Spirit continues to refine and transform me, and I know God will do the rest.

This is a post about forgiveness, and about how forgiveness can be a lot harder than we want it to be.

Growing up, I ended up reading this verse a few times, and each time I read this verse I thought to myself: “Self, this means that if another person does wrong against you, you should forgive them every time that they hurt you”. For quite a while, this seemed like a very good and intelligent interpretation to me.

However, this interpretation misses something… sometimes it may take us more than once to forgive someone for the same thing.

For instance, I’ll give an example of something I’ve been struggling with. About a year or two ago, the actions of a person – let’s call them W – ended up playing a substantial part in costing me something that meant a lot to me. I know what happened wasn’t entirely their fault, and that their motivations weren’t even about hurting me personally. But that doesn’t excuse the way the situation was treated by W, and it doesn’t negate the role they played.

Now, rest assured dear readers, I have since forgiven W. I know what W did was partly due to wrongs that had been done to them earlier in life. I know W was doing what they thought was best at the time, and was trying to care for those in their life the best they knew how. And W is not a part of my life anymore, which is a very very good thing for everybody. Listen, we may forgive someone, but that doesn’t mean that what they did was okay. Depending on the situation, there is often wisdom in maintaining a healthy distance between you and another person who has wronged you.

And yet. Sometimes I’ll be going about my day, doing whatever it is that I have to do, and my mind will drift, as all minds are prone to do from time to time. Suddenly I’ll think about W, and about what they cost me. I’ll feel bitterness and anger toward W, and I’ll think about all kinds of things I could say or ways I could act toward them if I ever see their face again. And this happens in spite of me having already forgiven them, and in spite of me being in a much better place these days.

In that moment I need to forgive them again, even though I have forgiven them already.

This has probably happened about six or seven times over the last few months.

I don’t know when the last time will be that I think about W like this and have to forgive them again for the same thing. But, I do know that for myself, as well as my brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to forgive those who wrong us, even if it requires forgiving them multiple times for the same thing. Just as Christ hasn’t given up on forgiving us, so we are not to give up on forgiving others either.

Hey there readers! I know a lot of you are probably trying to view this on your mobile devices, and if you are you’re probably having trouble reading this text due to my crummy CSS code. If this is bothering you, I need to ask a huge favor of you guys: deal with it. I’ll get it fixed at some point, but I just fnished migrating my blog to a new server, and what I’m writing about here is very important to me and I don’t want to wait another couple days to share it.

Thank you for your patience ❤

In this post I’m going to try to give a high-level view of what the heck I’m doing as a Christian. I’m going to hit on a lot of different things, including spirits, death, Jesus, and how I relate to and view them all. I need to warn you right now that for some of you, some of these things may make you feel uncomfortable. I’d really like all of you guys to read this, but if you’re not at a good spot to read it right now, this is your chance to duck out and come back later.

Some of you are also going to feel like I’m jumping through a lot of assumptions. If you feel this way, please message me or leave me a comment – I would like to talk about these more, but I would also like to keep this relatively straight-forward and easy to follow. A single blog post is not really enough time to take a deep dive into the weeds on… well, pretty much everything I wrote about here.

Okay let’s get started!

The Spiritual Realm

There is more to the world than what can be seen, heard, touched or felt with our physical bodies.

Our world also exists in the spiritual realm. Somewhat similarly to how a 2D plane exists in a 3D environment, the earth exists in a supernatural space of sorts which we can barely comprehend. A multitude of beings exist in the spiritual world – we call them ‘spirits’. Among them are angels and demons, and among them are souls, which are spirits that are (or have been) humans at some point. Perhaps there are other kinds of spiritual beings as well that are neither angels, demons nor souls.

Countless tales from people of all walks of life confirm the presence of spiritual beings. Many people personally confirm and swear by encounters such as miracles of healing occurring among Protestant Christians, hexes of destruction being wrought on those living in 3rd-world African or South American nations, ouija boards spelling out unknown truths, and encounters of having visions at 2:30am of a recently departed friend telling you they came to say goodbye. Such phenomena have occurred in all nations at all times. Some of them have been recorded in writing as far back as recorded history goes, and recently have even been televised.

However, our souls are very weak compared to many other spirits. This is a stark difference to the physical world which we exercise relative dominion and control over.

Some powerful spirits seek to hurt and control humans – we call these demons. Ask around enough, particularly in poor parts of cities or in countries where witch doctors are prevalent, and you will run into forces meddling with people. This is one of the ways we can tell the relative strength of our own souls vs. other spirits – our souls can be dominated by a demons, and there is nothing that humans can do to escape by their own strength – the demon is free to come and go as it pleases.

There are also spirits that care about humans and want good things to happen to them that we call angels. A multitude of first-person accounts of having seen such beings supports their presence. That humanity has not been overrun by demons vouches for the existence of angels, as well as for their strength.

Even though we have trouble detecting them with our physical senses, we have proof of our own soul’s existences through several ways. We are able to communicate with beings in the supernatural, and our spirits continue to exist after our life on earth is finished. Both can be derived from mediums who are able to communicate with deceased people and prayers that Catholics have had answered by praying for saints to intercede on their behalf. Further proof of our ability to communicate with spirits can be seen among Wiccans, as well as among Christians who have heard from God. Further proof of our spirit’s existence even after our bodies have passed can be seen from the numerous accounts of near-death patients having out-of-body experiences and from phenomena like ghosts haunting buildings where people have died and spirit orbs showing up in things like Gettysburg photos.

Finally, though I can only put a finger on it, there are very likely neutral spirits as well, or spirits that are neither for nor against humans, and perhaps may not even care – it would be arrogant to assume that all beings in this realm lived and died while centered around us.

A Creator

These spiritual creatures are intelligent and complex enough that, like humans and life on earth, it is extremely likely that they were designed and built by a Creator, a God per se. Perhaps these spiritual creatures had much do to with the creation of life on earth through its history – perhaps they were created much later on. Such a thing is hard to prove or even reason on. The same creator who made them would of course be capable of creating us.

Well What About Us?

Well, it seems our souls continue to exist and “live” in a sense after our bodies have expired. Furthermore, given the experiences of those who’ve successfully communicated with human spirits, souls don’t seem to have a known expiration date. Regardless of what we do here in this world, our bodies will all eventually die, but our souls will continue to live on. These souls even continue to have meaning and value long after our bodies have been buried and turn to dust.

Well then what happens to our souls once we die? Does anything we do as part of our lives affect the fate and journey of our souls once they’re no longer bound to the world as we know it? What about this creator – has He, She, It or They left any instructions for us in what we should do for our souls, if anything? If there was anything we should be doing, wouldn’t a Creator who loves and cares enough about us to make us give us a clear message of what we gotta do? Or is there even anything we can or should do at all?

Given what we can reasonably say about the spiritual realm and the creator, these are really really important questions that we need answers to! As our souls seem to potentially be more valuable than our lives on earth, what we believe about this, and the answers we find to these questions, can and should change the way we live out our lives.

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ lived his life on earth roughly 2000 years ago, in an era when overall writing skills, literacy and record-keeping processes were just …not nearly what they are now. This has made taking the New Testament at face value a slightly nebulous task. However, there are some things we can safely say about Jesus’s life on earth.

We can safely say that Jesus existed. He was not only written about in the Bible, but was written about in other historical documents on the Israeli region during that time period, and had hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses during His ministry.

We can safely say that Jesus was a wise person. Study the parables that Jesus preached, and study particularly the context into which he was speaking – He was no fool. A lot of scholars have done research on Hebrew culture during the time of Jesus’ ministry, and their work provides a very useful context for us to read and understand his teachings through..

We can safely say that He performed miracles. Without the miracles, it would have been difficult for His popularity to become what it did. It’s true that the Israelites were eager for a military savior to free them from Roman rule, and that many hoped during Jesus’s life that this is what He would be. However, His followers would have disbanded and fled after He died instead of rallying and multiplying the way they did. (That His followers did rally and did multiply suggests that He did indeed rise from the dead and show Himself to them.)

Jesus’ ability to perform miracles shouldn’t surprise you or be thought of as impossible – remember there is a whole spiritual realm and/or dimension of the universe that we have barely any clue about. If He really was the son of God, His soul would be far stronger than that of any human’s and He would be able to perform such acts. The miracles that He is recorded as having performed are clear demonstrations about His power and influence in the spiritual world, especially in regards to His ability to cast out demons and in His ability to bless His disciples with the Holy Spirit.

We can safely say that He cared about and loved others. Many of the parables He told featured grace and mercy. Often he healed the sick, fed the hungry, and welcomed all kinds of men, women and children into His company. Never once did he act in a way to cause somebody else harm.

This brings us to an important point that Jesus made. Iin John 14:6 He says: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+14&version=NIV). Throughout His ministry He makes this point several times. Jesus tells a criminal who He’s crucified with that he’ll be with Him in paradise. And throughout the new testament He answers questions on what people must do to gain eternal life or enter heaven.

This is a big deal. We have observed that Jesus was a wise person, that He loves others, and that He wields far more spiritual power than the ordinary person. Taken in context, in this verse He’s saying that nobody comes to God (the Creator) except through Him. A wise person, a loving person, and one confirmed with vast spiritual powers would not lie about something as important as this.

Power

Earlier I mentioned the Holy Spirit. In the Bible, it refers to God as a trinity – as the Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Spirit. The Father (the Creator) created both the physical world as well as the spiritual realm. (whether He did this by molding the earth over several hundred billion years or whether He did it in seven days is not very important in noting that He created it). In the physical world, Jesus is the manifestation of the Father, or the manifestation of God. In the spiritual realm, the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of the Father, or the manifestation of God.

As noted earlier, Jesus was able to bless His disciples with the Holy Spirit. We as humans have the ability to house spirits, having them possess and dwell in us. Spirits can even work in the physical realm through us when they are possessing and dwelling in us.

Though not personally experiencing it myself, I’ve heard multiple accounts of Christians praying in Jesus’ name for protection over a house, and having strange things happening in the building stop happening. I’ve heard multiple accounts of Christians praying in Jesus’ (God’s) name for healing for someone, and having that healing occur. I’ve heard of multiple Christians praying over someone dealing with demonic influences or possession in Jesus’s name, and that person being freed. I’ve heard accounts of people being woken up at 2:30am with an intense need they need to pray for someone, and months later after that person had prayed for the other, touching base and discovering that the other person had miraculously been saved from physical danger at that exact time. I’ve heard from God through prayer. I’ve seen Christians speaking in tongues. (I’ve also seen Christians doing something that was definitely not speaking in tongues – not gonna say any more on that here). This has been my experience.

Final Thoughts

There is, as you know…. a lot more to Christianity than what I stated above. As I noted earlier, there is a lot more to every single thing I stated above.

However, this is what drives and provides a foundation in my choice to be a Christian. It is very important to start at the root of an issue and work your way out from there, or you may spend your whole life getting lost among branches without figuring out anything or ever being at peace. And when looking at what’s going to happen to our spirits after we die, it’s important to start at the beginning of what we know about the way the universe works, and what our part is in it.