Exit World. Enter Life

There’s a recurring theme in my posts regarding the “ways of the world”, it’s something I think we all deal with at one point in our lives every single day. It’s pride and lust. The two traits that are contrary to humility and love, also happen to be my weakest and most commonly committed transgressions of the flesh. I use to be a huge fan of JLH from IKWYDLS. (Guess the name of the actress and movie, and I will send you a toy from Aurora, I’ll pay for shipping too) Anyways, watching this movie recently brought back memories of my worldly former self, the high school days when I thought pride and lust were just part of being human and nothing I need to repent or feel guilty about. The time line of when this movie first came out and the state of my mind and heart, or shall I say the “altered” state of my mind for the most part at the time, was utterly full of gross malevolence, perversion, and anger, compounded by my profound resentment and hatred of all forms and figures of authority. I’ve been in a profanity laced argument with my PE teacher in junior high with added hand gesture to boot, I’ve had both of my hands cuffed to my ankles and carried to the backseat of a squad car, and finally I’ve prayed and cursed the God I felt to be uncaring, disconnected, and impersonal. Through these phases in my life and knowing what I know now, I wonder if I would be any different if I’d have been raised up in church, I mean KCBC. If I had been forced to sit through 3 hours of sermon on Sundays, or go to retreats twice a year, would I have seen JLH any differently?
Hmm….I think so…I didn’t have a spiritual conscience during my youth. I was pretty much, all flesh. Only time I felt hesitant about behaving in a certain manner was if my actions were to harm or offend someone who I may have deemed innocent. This didn’t really restrict my actions much because most people were not innocent in my eyes. Only old people and or kids had a pass, everyone else was crap. Then I came to this church and the first Timothy Fellowship I attended, I sat around 10 ladies who were all between the age of 17 ~ 30 and none of them were wearing makeup, or very light makeup. This was weird from the world I had “dwelled” in. I was caught off guard. It was very refreshing, and they all talked about God like they had daily conversations with him, much like they would be conversing with their boyfriend or something. Genuine, no fakeness.


This was of course, before I got saved, but I think that’s when I started feeling the pull from God. I started getting attracted to the fact that they held a faith in God that didn’t involve worldly relationships, uplifting praises, no social/worldly ways of enjoyment, it was all just faith based on what they read in the bible. I think this is about time JLH started getting old, and my tendency of measuring the goodness of a person male or female went beyond mere perceptions of “style” or “personality”. I still struggle with “mind-sin”, but I find myself not really interested in finishing the movie IKWYDLS. It seemed to be stupid, yea, she looks hot in that movie, but I didn’t care much anymore. I think this is how I know that I have something inside of me that’s not of the world. I think this is when I realize I have a source of power that’s greater than any tests or temptations. I have the holy spirit. I just need to use it. Is it pride? What is it that stops me from praying instead of stumbling? I ask and I answer. Pride and lusts, ways of the world….as it says in the song, “a thousand times I fall, though your mercy remains, should I stumble again, still I’m caught in your grace…”, it’s an everlasting love that can’t be taken, and I realize how undeserving we are of this grace.

It’s hard to see the sisters at our church as more than that…a sister in Christ, anything more or less would be awkward, as I know this from actual and personal experiences. (shhhhhh….)   :)

“38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (romans 8)

When I first became convicted of my sinful nature during my first retreat while reading passages from Romans, I realized I had lived my life knowingly indulgent to my desires all the while falsely maintaining my belief that I was a Christian. It was an inherent belief of the culture I had been raised in, it was all religion, not Truth, it was in a sense a relationship I had built through the worldly influences of my surroundings, my parents, it was the social aspect that garnered my attraction to Christianity. Simply put, my faith was merely an engraved belief in some doctrine that I had freely shaped and formed to cater to my own self-need and this self-centered faith inevitably crumbled and shattered when my”SELF” started feeling unsatisfied. (fragment?) Instead of looking at what kind of a “Christian” lifestyle I had lived, I blamed God for not making me happy. (?!)

…..i don’t even need to go on with this post. No conclusion, just simply put……Exit World. Enter Life.

God Bless.

Brother jimmy








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