I have to admit right up front that I’ve never been a workaholic or bowed to the professional pressures of being in the office long hours just to make myself look good. Believe it or not, I had that same mindset for my entire 20 year military career and it never cost me any assignments or promotions. I can’t say I was always able to verbalize the reasoning for my very strong resistance to “keeping up appearances” like so many others did but just recently, I figured out the real root of my conviction. Yes, it produced a conflict inside of me by quietly refusing to adhere to the very obvious but “unwritten professional rules”. However, I understand that it was God who put that conviction inside of me at an early age without my knowing it was him and it was part of something much, much bigger which we will discuss here.

The American Idol

And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.

Mark 4:19 (KJV)

This is a topic I’m going to be talking about many more times because of how serious a problem it is in my country. We need to get to the root of the problem that I’ve been observing for several decades now because it is taking this entire nation to hell. In my country, we have written in big bold letters on our currency that we claim to trust in God. Right. That “motto” is written on our money which should be a reminder that we trust God, NOT money. Yet, that is not what we do at all. Our motto is a lie and unfortunately many Christians are guilty of violating this very Biblical command (as used to be the same for me).

As I was saying at the top here, for my entire 20 year military career, I had a strange but very strong conviction to never stay in the office longer than was necessary. I can’t even say I understood where this feeling came from but as soon as the end of the day came, I was out the door as soon as possible. Most officers like myself however, did the opposite. I saw even Christians staying until 7:00 PM on a regular basis and to be honest, I didn’t even know what they were doing there that long. It was an obvious but unwritten rule that if you were a “professional officer” who wanted to move up the ranks, then it was “expected” that you stay there about 12 hours per day.

I knew that on the surface, that was extremely unhealthy for many reasons. I knew that life was more than work and if you lived an unbalanced life, you were going to be an extremely miserable person. For those who were married and hardly had any time at home with their families, that was often a recipe for marital problems and children that grew up with attitudes of rebellion. I’ve seen that happen many times.

The root of the problem has several aspects tied together, like a root with many branches. Partly, it is a fear of man which leads people to feel compelled to work longer hours just to “look good” among their peers. It’s also partly a fear connected to money and provision which is due to a lack of true personal connection with and faith in God. Lastly, it is partly because of making money and material things an idol which has been raised and worshiped above God. Much of this has one common thread: the sin of pride.

What I’m saying here applies to both Christians and non-Christians alike. Fear of man, fear of lack of provision, love of material things, and much more is all rooted in pride, exactly as the Apostle John said in his letter…

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

1 John 2:16 (KJV)

I Wasn’t Going To Be Like That

This is the American idol. Everything in my country is run on pride in one form or another and that unfortunately includes the Christians. This is what I discovered when God pushed me out of my career at the 20 year point and initiated me into His ancient wilderness training program. I’ve said before several times that, when God ended my career and would not allow me to have another job, I realized I had spent decades in churches that taught me NOTHING. I had become exactly like the rest of the unbelieving world and had never established a true faith in God for much of anything.

So, let’s get back to what I was saying about my unusual conviction. True, I had developed basically no faith at all in my decades of church but, I still had a subtle but strong conviction that I was not going to be a mind controlled institutionalized robot like many others I worked with for my 20 years. I saw how many of the officers I worked with had no beliefs of any kind in God. They lived their own life on their own terms and thought any idea of “religion” was a very inconvenient embarrassment. They were “too smart” to believe in God and they were not going to look like an idiot in front of their peers or cause their career to get cut short.

I always wanted to have my time to myself because I had deep rooted feeling beneath the surface that there was much more to this life than climbing a professional ladder. Most of these people I refer to who had no God in their life made their career their “god”. I never wanted to end up like any of them and so I did not spend my time as they did. I saw that same mindset when I was a junior officer and I saw it among my peers when I was a Lt Col. I saw it at all the bases I was assigned to and I definitely saw it at THE military headquarters: the Pentagon.

Just so you know, I’m not singling out the military here. That was my experience because my career was the military. But this same mindset exists in many other professional circles as well because it is the same mindset of my country in overall terms.

You Need To Find Out Now…

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.

Mark 10:21-22 (KJV)

When you read the Bible, especially focusing on the words of Jesus, you find that He said a few things said about all this. Jesus used a parable of seed sown on stony ground to illustrate the true heart of a person who is like the above. The cares of the world include the fear of man, trying to keep up “good appearances”, trusting in your job and money rather than God, and caring more about your material conveniences… all that is what causes many people to end up in hell.

Jesus came here to be our savior. His words are to be listened to more than any other part of the Bible when it comes to our eternal salvation. You really need to consider the ultimate truth about where you are going and whether or not you are doing any of what Jesus said. You need to get serious with yourself and stop accepting a superficial, shallow feeling that you are “ok” with God. From my observation in decades of churches of all kinds, I can say that most people are exactly as I was before what I call my “supernatural awakening”.

Most Christians in my country are shallow and immature and have no true connection with God at all. They claim to have a “personal relationship with Jesus” but yet they mostly have none of what I talk about anywhere in my blogs here. That’s how I was most of my life so I know this first hand! I’m not attacking them, I’m pointing out from my direct experience what the true spiritual state is in most churches in my country. I can say this because of how many years I lived exactly like that!

As I said at the top – you need to get serious about where you are going to spend eternity. To do that, you need to get real and read the words of Jesus in the Gospels and accurately measure yourself against what He said. Most Christians do what I used to do – accept an extremely watered down understanding of the Bible and make all sorts of broad brush generalizations that painted a false picture of our true spiritual state. We do this because we are mostly unwilling to find out the inconvenient truth about ourselves. We don’t want to find out what God really says about us and we think we can just push it off to judgment day and we deceive ourselves into thinking we are going to breeze by and hear the words “well done…”

I found out myself when God began speaking to me in dreams about 14 years ago that this overly casual and sloppy false American religion will send you to hell. The number of things God showed me in my dreams that were wrong with me was too many to count! But I wanted Him to point those things out to me because I wanted to know right here and now what He had to say about me! I had no interest in waiting until it was too late to get His true judgment about me.

And you can do the same. In fact, you MUST. You must ask God to show you what He really has to say about you and much of the time, those answers will come to you in your dreams at night when you are sleeping. Go back and read my many blogs about dreams and see how many deal with corrections and rebukes. True, I could write MUCH more about that but you will see that I gave you a good glimpse into the kinds of things God will show you – for your own good!

Critical Action

Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile [false, slothful, deceitful, slackness].

Psalms 32:2 (KJV)

So, now that we’ve reached the end of this episode, I didn’t really say that much about why I did not work long hours like everyone else. But as I said above, I knew deep down there was more to life than climbing a ladder. Because I was not taught about the supernatural realm all those years, I had no knowledge of how to get updates from God about all aspects of my life. I did not know how to spend hours in God’s presence and develop a real connection with Him. I did not know all that I wrote about here in my blogs but yet, still there was an undercurrent of something of God that was pulling me in this direction.

Now I know what I was feeling and why I had to keep searching for something much more to life. For the most part, I know what is most important in my life and where my focus should be. I have a much better sense of priorities and where my true faith and trust should be. But that took years to develop by going through God’s ancient wilderness training program.

What about you? What do you really trust in? What are you willing to give up to get God Himself? Are you willing to give up everything and look like an idiot as I have these last 10 years just so God can reward you with something so big that you could never have imagined?

I hope your answer is something like mine and I guess we’ll find out…

To be continued…

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