When you question your beliefs, question the Bible, or question the requirements within the church, these are signs you are seeking the truth and are willing to see things differently. Your loving and eternally patient Creator hears you and has provided a way for you to step away from any confusion and heaviness and walk towards experiencing a loving and peaceful life. This book is one of His answers for you. (364 pages)
I know where you are because I was at those same crossroads. I was raised with Evangelical Christian and Pentecostal beliefs, and this created a very firm and mighty depiction of who God was. Similar depictions of God are also shared by Mormon's (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), a Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventist's and other extreme or rigid belief systems. As I grew older, I often struggled with how the Bible depicted God’s unloving need to kill and destroy his enemies, and how his unforgiving nature could only be appeased by conforming to his demands and swearing obedience to his requirements … or else. These splinters in my beliefs eventually led me to see past what was written about God and that allowed me to embrace what I felt the real God was sharing with me, that He loved us beyond our capacity to fathom, and that forgiveness was totally unconditional, and already applied without request or demand.
But doesn't everyone already know God is a God of love? Well, yes and no. Many believe He loves, but only when certain conditions are met, or when certain beliefs are embraced.
What happens here is that when God's love is limited to a specific belief system, it can be easy to be deceived into believing a person has obtained some wonderful gift from God, in that God has chosen to love and help them, where those who don't share those beliefs, do not receive this love or help. This, of course, is what defines a religious belief, that God will Love and reward a person for believing a specific way, and that same God will then hate and punish a person who believes differently. This is only possible when assigning God duality, and that results in God being seen as both a God to Love and a God to Fear, and that is simply accepted as normal. As my writings will explain later, not only is this inaccurate, but it is simply not possible.
Many of the answers you are looking for may be found in my book which is based upon a core concept which is clearly illustrated in an excerpt from one of my articles —
By Being Willing to See, You Will Discover a God of Love
There is nothing God requires that you do. There is no payment or sacrifice he requires or desires. There is no path to discover by racking your brain in trying to figure out what it is that God would have you do. There is no physical thing in the entire universe that you need to give God or to those who claim they follow God. There is only one thing that God desires from you and that is for you to Be Willing.
- Be Willing to see clearly.
- Be Willing to choose differently.
- Be Willing to set aside what the world has taught you.
- Be Willing to be what he would have you be.
Your willingness creates an opening in your being that allows the Holy Spirit to Do things. It allows the Holy Spirit to heal you, teach you and guide you. Learn to Be willing and you'll truly see what God Can Do.
My articles showed a loving and peaceful God, and often pointed out the specific contradictions where he is shown otherwise in the Bible. Some of my earlier articles included a little Bible bashing or Christian bashing, however, this was simply due to unresolved anger at the time. For the most part, my goal was to both express the joy in what I was discovering, and to help those who were experiencing a similar desire to see their beliefs and God more truthfully.
So now, 20 years later, I have compiled all my writings here in this book in the order in which they were written. When put all together like this, they serve as a platform for experiencing a gradual change in seeing God from a different point of view as compared to what was often served to us from a religious perspective.
So, for now, just open your mind to the ideas and concepts I share in this book because they are expressions of God’s love and forgiveness. Read through these articles and open your mind for Spirit to heal your thoughts and lead you to the passages that are best for you to absorb. Then allow yourself to step back from all that you had believed was true. Take a moment to just let it all go and allow yourself to become a blank slate. Take a deep breathe, exhale, and step forward into a loving and peaceful experience where you are totally safe to learn new things, and you may find that you are Seeing God ... perhaps for the first time.