Summary

In this episode, Alan Wartes explores the vital connection between trust and radical repentance in the context of living in chaotic times. He emphasizes the importance of trusting God fully and understanding the sequence of trust leading to obedience and true spiritual freedom.

Transcript

Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.

It’s been a couple of months since my last Dispatch. I promised then to talk more about the connection between repentance and trust. I suggested that we will continue to fail at radical repentance and fully abiding in Christ until we have settled the question of where we place our trust — in God or in Satan’s deceptive counterfeits? It’s hard to imagine a more important topic, and I’ll finally share some ideas in a moment.

But first I want to tell you why it has taken so long to keep that promise. These conversations certainly aren’t about me, but I think there could be value in sharing what I’ve been going through because it might shed light on your own experience.

The truth is that we live in extraordinary times, maybe even unique in history. I know that’s not news, and you already sense this for yourself. It’s hard to deny that our collective assumptions and beliefs about everything are frankly starting to fall apart. The world we think we know and have depended on is convulsing under our feet, and not just in trivial ways at the surface, but all the way down to the roots of shared reality. The pace of that change seems to pick up speed every day.

That’s scary, chaotic stuff, no matter who you are. It’s especially so for someone who feels called to speak up about what we see and even dare to challenge others to question what we’ve been told, to consider uncomfortable ideas and radical new ways of looking at these things.

I haven’t been shy about claiming that we live in an age of unprecedented deception. It’s not an overstatement to say that everything about our civilization is built on Satanic lies. His purpose is simple — to hide God from us and even to take His place, if that were possible. He also aims to obscure the truth of who we really are as God’s redeemed children.

I believe that the reason for all the chaos we are currently experiencing is that this age of deception has now reached a decisive moment of disclosure. Lies that have thrived in the shadows for centuries are now being dragged into the light and exposed. People are hungrier for truth today than I’ve ever seen in nearly seven decades of paying attention. That’s great news and can only be a work of the Holy Spirit of God. Praise Him.

But here is where I sense danger and have personally felt the need for heightened discernment and caution before speaking out. It’s way too easy to fall for new lies in the process of dismantling the old ones. That happens when we look for truth with a small “t” instead of seeking nothing less than the complete revelation of all that Satan has worked so hard to hide from us. That is the full knowledge of God as sovereign creator of all things and who we are meant to be in Him through Christ Jesus.

Getting caught up in small “t” truth is especially troubling when so many of the old lies we are confronting are deeply embedded in what the modern church teaches and how it behaves in the world. I’ve said before, the church is not exempt from the deception and corruption we are talking about.

As one who dares to speak out, the prospect of inadvertently misleading anyone about that is, frankly, terrifying. So, I confess. I’ve been dragging my feet and finding reasons to be busy with other things. But, in His infinitely tender and loving way, the Lord sent a couple of fellow believers to gently encourage me to just trust Him with all those fears and to faithfully say what He has helped me to see. In other words, to pursue a healthy fear of the Lord and not let worldly fear paralyze me.

So, this is me passing that message along to you. As followers of Jesus in this age of chaotic, even catastrophic, disclosure, we don’t have to be afraid to ask inconvenient questions, challenge cherished beliefs or consider new ideas. God is never threatened or offended when we search for truth. And what we earnestly seek in Jesus’ name, we always find, even if the path doesn’t lead exactly where we expected.

Going forward, I’ll certainly put this to the test in these Dispatches.

Which brings me to what I really want to talk about: Trust.

All that I just shared was a reminder to me to trust God if I’m anxious or timid when speaking up in public about things I see. But the lesson applies equally to everything else in my life — to worries over health, money, keeping loved ones safe, political upheaval, you name it. The key is trust.

In the face of all those fears and more, I will always trust something. The default setting of my old sinful nature is to trust what everyone else trusts — that is, all the things the world promises will provide relief and security. You know what these are. They are Satan’s counterfeits, and they always add up to a false sense of power and control over life’s circumstances in order to dictate outcomes. It is an illusion that is nevertheless extremely powerful.

Radical repentance, as I’ve been discussing it, calls us to recognize Satan’s deception in all of those counterfeits and to “come out” of that world entirely. Paul wrote in Romans 12:

“Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Romans 12: 1-2

Here’s the problem: To even the most earnest followers of Jesus verses like that sound like a commandment to obey; to somehow find the courage to renounce everything we’ve ever been taught we need to survive and just “do better” at “proper worship” instead.

Not surprisingly, we fail. And we fail again. We will always fail. And having failed we take one of two paths. The first is to feel crippling shame and unworthiness at our weakness. We feel naked and start avoiding our Father, like Adam and Eve did in the garden. The second is to doubt that radically renouncing the world’s way of doing things is what God really meant by “repentance.” That leads to rationalizing how compromise with the world is really God’s will and His way of providing for us.

Both of those are dead ends. They each lead away from the truth that repentance is not about obedience or even about behavior at all. The call to repent is ultimately an invitation to trust. Everything else follows trust.

In thinking about this topic, I remembered a hymn I used to sing often as a young person in church — Trust and Obey.

Trust and obey

For there’s no other way

To be happy in Jesus

But to trust and obey

I still love it. But something jumped out at me when I looked at it this time. That is, this chorus seems to present trust and obedience as two distinct things: trust and obey. The reality is that they form one thing, a sequence — we trust then obey. There’s no other way. Without understanding this, we will fail and keep failing.

One reason is that obedience — radical repentance — requires us to “forget the former things” that we learned over a lifetime of indoctrination and bitter experience and to step out into the apparent thin air of an invisible kingdom.

Imagine you are standing on a ledge at the top of a skyscraper, swaying in the wind. The memory of every fall you’ve ever taken fills you with fear. You feel it in your very molecules. You know what will happen if you slip. Then someone beside you says, “It’s okay. Jump. No harm will come to you.”

Can you imagine ever trusting anyone that much?

And yet, that is the essence of radical repentance. It is precisely what we are called on to do when we follow Jesus. Not to climb literal buildings and jump off, of course. But metaphorical ones? Ones with potential consequences that seem just as severe? Absolutely!

What else can we conclude when we hear the Master say:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?”

Matthew 6:25

The King James Version say to literally “Take no thought for your life….”

What? “Taking thought” about those things and a multitude of others is deeply ingrained in us by the conditioning of pain, fear and human persuasion. Satan offers a multitude of ways to “take thought” and control outcomes.

This is the enemy’s way, and it can’t be replaced by anything other than deep trust in God.

In fact, the entire Sermon on the Mount is an invitation to trust God enough to jump into a whole new way of thinking and being that looks idiotic, even suicidal, to anyone without the ability to trust. To them, obedience is unthinkable, impossible.

Here’s the tragic part: Millions of precious believers are locked in a struggle to obey without first cultivating trust. They’ve gone into battle alone and unarmed. Sadly, they are often surrounded at church by others who aren’t really interested in either trust or radical repentance, though they present a convincing illusion every Sunday. Compromise with the world’s way works just fine for them. Their influence adds another layer of confusion to those genuinely seeking first God’s kingdom and His righteousness.

Whether these people can be called believers at all is for the Lord to decide. If that seems overly harsh, then consider how Paul spoke about people who he perceived to be wolves in sheep’s clothing.

It is not our place to pronounce judgment, but it surely is our job to test the spirits, as John advised, to recognize deception when we see it and act accordingly. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will guide every such person to the truth.

Today, I’m talking to that remnant of God’s people who truly hunger and thirst for righteousness, but are malnourished by the fast-food, feel-good gospel they hear and read about. They want to obey and they strive to comprehend what that means and how to do it. They fail because they haven’t yet seen the sequence: Trust, then obey.

But even now, we are getting ourselves. Trust, it turns out, is not the first item in the sequence. Without knowing this, we fail again, because we attempt blind trust, which is not what we are called to in Christ. Blind trust is not trust at all but is only gambling and hoping for the best.

Yes, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5 that we live by faith and not by sight. But faith in what? In whom and why?

To succeed at trust and obedience you must know the answer to these questions. We are not called to trust in outcomes that always go our way if we believe. That is the “name-it-and-claim-it” prosperity gospel that would turn the Most High God into a genie in a bottle.

No, we are called to something invisible, eternal and infinitely more valuable.

“Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”

John 1:12-13

Do you see that? We are invited by grace and faith into a loving relationship with the Most High God! It gets even better. Paul writes:

“So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.”

Romans 5:11 NLT

Are you kidding me? I get to be friends with the creator all things? Yes.

With Him as friend, I learn to trust Him, no matter my circumstances, no matter the outcome of trials I face, no matter the cost of repentance and following Him. I trust Him alone and that makes all the difference.

This leads us to ground we will cover in the next Dispatch. If this marvelous trust does not come first in the sequence that leads to radical repentance and the joy of abiding in Christ, then what does?

See you next time!

Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Summary

Alan Wartes explores the spiritual deception rooted in modern science and societal lies, emphasizing the importance of radical repentance and trust in God to break free from the world's falsehoods and find true freedom in Christ.

Keywords

spiritual deception, radical repentance, trust in God, biblical truth, spiritual freedom, Christian faith, deception in science, biblical worldview

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Spiritual Awakening

01:44 Confronting Deception and Lies

04:36 The Radical Nature of Repentance

07:59 Understanding the Lies of Science

10:40 The Impact of Deception on Society

13:48 The Journey of Spiritual Rehab

16:39 Trusting God for True Freedom

Transcript

Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.

Whoever you are I’m glad you found your way here. It’s worth repeating that I’m no expert. I have no degrees or credentials to set me apart from anyone else.

If you have found your way to these videos, which I don’t promote in any way, I’m betting it’s because the Holy Spirit knows you are as tired as I am of swimming in a toxic ocean of lies. You’re tired of pretending there is nothing wrong with the world. You are waking up to the lies all around you suddenly aware you are starving for the truth.

That’s hard enough, but if you are like me, you are even starting to feel angry that Satan’s program of lies includes much of what you’ve been taught about what it means to follow Jesus. You know in your soul that there is far more to the life Jesus won for you on the cross and in His resurrection than you’ve ever been taught in church.

Paul wrote in Galatians chapter 5:

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

Galatians 5:1

It’s astonishing to read that and realize you don’t feel free. You don’t feel empowered as a new creation in Christ. You feel constantly off balance, afraid, guilty and even ashamed because all of that must be your fault. Jesus said the truth will set you free, but you don’t feel any nearer to really knowing what truth He’s talking about than when you first believed.

Am I the only one who has experienced this? I don’t think so.

The part that makes me angry is realizing this is no accident. What I’m describing is the mental and emotional state of someone who has been psychologically abused, subjected to evil gaslighting on an unimaginable scale. In these videos I’ve set out to face this fact, as uncomfortable and controversial as that may be. There’s nothing easy about that. Along the way I’ll probably get some things wrong, but I can’t keep pretending and looking away.

In a moment, I’ll share how I’m being led to consider a much deeper understanding of what the Bible teaches about these things. The truth is not new; it’s been there all along in plain sight. Most believers would recognize and agree with it — superficially, at least. Genuinely living by this truth is a different matter entirely. Layer upon layer of deep deception has kept us trapped, as the Bible says, in an intellectual form of godliness while denying it’s power.

But we don’t have to stay there.

Before I get to that, however, here’s a quick recap of ground I’ve covered so far.

First, repentance is an ongoing way of life for followers of Jesus, not just that first moment when we confess our need for salvation from sin. It is the daily process of disentangling ourselves from Satan’s world — Babylon — and coming out of her as we are commanded to do.

“Come out of her my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven and God has remembered her crimes.”

Revelation 18:4-5

That’s repentance. But many people who identify as Christians aren’t used to thinking this still applies to them. It does.

Second, repentance is a radical thing to do because it is nothing less than giving our consent to die rather than remain in slavery to our old sinful nature. It’s what Jesus was talking about when He said:

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?”

Matthew 16:24-26

From the world’s point of view, that’s the most radical thing ever spoken.

Next, we can’t come out of Babylon without being brutally honest about all the ways we are still in it. This world IS deception, I have said. We must open our eyes to the multitude of Satan’s lies and admit how we still believe them, live by them and even defend them. The purpose of that is to reclaim what the lies have taken from us — the true knowledge of God and of ourselves as His redeemed children.

This is hard work because it challenges everything we think we know. It’s no small matter for us to question things we’ve religiously believed since birth.

And yet, aggressively confronting this deception is exactly the task set before us. Paul’s description of that is downright militant.

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

This phrase, “every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,” describes everything in our world. Everything plays that role to some degree.

Let’s get more specific about that. Keep in mind that all deception has a single goal: to hide God from us. To sow doubt about His sovereignty and even His existence, if possible.

Let’s start with science. I have a degree in geology and was trained to “trust the science.” But I now see that, taken as a whole, modern science presents the universe as cold, dark, empty, random, mechanical and dangerous. It teaches that the earth is a meaningless speck of dust in the vast void of space. It enshrines chaos as the engine of creation. Our fate, science preaches, is governed by vague, impersonal forces like gravity, thermodynamics and the random hand of evolution across practically endless amount of time.

And it’s all a lie. Or rather a multitude of them which all originate in the big one, the Big Bang of modern lies, to borrow their term. That’s when so-called science enthroned the sun at the center of our existence. To explain that they imagined that a mysterious force called gravity is what holds things together. To this day no one can prove what it is or where it comes from.

That done, science then imagined many planets in orbit around the sun and gave all of them the names of pagan gods. The sun, itself named Helios after the Greek god, is said to orbit the center of the Milky Way, which is one of billions of galaxies barreling through the cosmos at a million miles per hour.

All of it is conjecture. None of it is proven fact. I know this is tough, because we’ve all been conditioned to believe it’s true, but believing doesn’t make it so.

Allegedly, it was the leadership of the renaissance-era Roman Catholic Church that pulled the trigger on all of this. They had three goals in mind:

• Discredit God as the supreme creator of all things

• Question the Bible as the ultimate source of truth

• Oppose the growing protestant reformation working to put the Bible into the hands of everyone, not just an elite priesthood.

Why would they choose this as a way to accomplish all of that? Because the Bible describes the origin, shape and nature of our universe very differently and in no uncertain terms. If you could get a competing lie this big to stick, then you could cast doubt on everything else the Bible has to say.

This was a religious and philosophical choice, not a scientific “discovery.” It is pure deception that has spawned a flood of supporting lies over the centuries, right up to today. I’ve included a link to an informative documentary film on this subject.

Moving on, the lies of science have enabled deception to infect everything else.

In one way or another, the picture that science paints of a universe that can be explained without the need for God, of humanity without divine origin and worth and of life without meaning or purpose has corrupted everything in the world.

• Health care

• Government and politics

• Money

• Education

• News media

• Entertainment

• Churches

That’s a mouthful, I know. There’s a reason why most of us will plug our ears rather than listen to it. Many will fight with religious zeal to defend it. Because naming the lies inevitably puts us in serious conflict with people and institutions committed to Satan’s deception. That even includes people we love. It’s not safe, and what we stand to lose is real. Jesus told us this would happen when we follow Him.

“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’”

Matthew 10:34-36

This doesn’t happen just because someone suddenly professes belief in Jesus. It takes more than that to make enemies out of members of your own household. It’s the result of radical repentance, of calling lies what they are and refusing to live by them any longer.

So where does that leave us? I’ll tell you. It brings us to the threshold of a profound choice. It’s not new, it’s just been obscured by the deception.

Because Satan’s deceptive world is all I’ve ever known and because I can’t hope to come out of it quickly or on my own, in my last Dispatch I shared that if feels like I’ve come to the end of my ability to cope. I said I feel God has put me in spiritual rehab.

After hearing that, one subscriber wrote that the idea of rehab is a comforting one because it implies being under the constant care of the Great Healer Himself. Rehab is a place where we can rest and be guided, if we are willing.

The key words there are, “… if we are willing.”

Anyone who has ever struggled with addiction, or watched as someone they love does, will tell you that healing never happens until the addict is ready to receive it. I think that’s just as true of someone who comes to the cross but hesitates to lose their life even in order to save it.

The writer of Hebrews echoes this idea.

“Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.”

Hebrews 3:6

That made me wonder why do we ever resist the redemption that God so clearly promises to anyone who believes? One element in the clinical definition of addiction is that an addict persists in behaviors or beliefs they know are causing them harm. Why? What keeps us trapped in the obvious self-harm of living by and for all of Satan’s lies in this world?

Some people simply love the darkness and have no desire for anything else. But that’s not true for those of us who are hungry to follow Jesus. Why do we so often continue to be ruled by the lies and habits of the old way, even though we are sick of eating its rotten fruit?

This brings me to the powerful insight I teased earlier. One answer to that is that we approach repentance without first settling a matter of vital importance:

Who and what do we trust? God or a world built of lies?

I told you that’s a statement that most Christians will hear and say, “Oh, yeah, sure, I know that.”

But here’s a hard truth. Almost no one has any idea what it really means to trust God. And that, more than anything, is why believers stay stuck in a world built of lies. It’s why we fail at radical repentance. It’s why the call to abide seems just out of reach and why the Bible’s promises can feel meant for someone else.

Imagine checking into a rehab center where you don’t trust your basic needs will be provided. You feel afraid, unworthy and unsafe most of the time and you don’t trust anything that the care givers tell you.

Under those conditions, could you reasonably expect to succeed?

And yet, tragically, that’s how most of us approach Christian life. Deep down we believe the lie that how we live now is the only way it’s possible to live and survive. We can’t escape our conditioned trust in false hope promised by the false gods of this world. Healing is impossible until we trust God instead.

In my next Dispatch I will unpack all of this in more detail. What does radical trust look like in daily life and how does it lead us closer to the freedom we are promised in Christ?

Until then, God bless you and keep you.

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Transcript below

Summary

Alan Wartes shares a profound reflection on spiritual revival, the deception of the world, and the urgent call for radical repentance and coming out of Babylon. He discusses the challenges of living in a deceptive world, the importance of truth, and the need for spiritual rehab to restore our understanding of God's sovereignty.

Keywords

spiritual revival, deception, repentance, truth, spiritual rehab, faith, Babylon, Satan, Christian life, spiritual discernment

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Spiritual Struggles

01:46 The Challenge of Radical Repentance

04:05 Awakening to Deception

07:27 The Urgency of Truth

10:05 Fractured Faith and Confusion

12:00 Satan's Strategy and Our Response

15:00 Restoring Knowledge and Truth

Transcript

I’m Alan Wartes. Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front.

I have to tell you these past few weeks have been hard for me. It has felt like God put me in time out while I struggled to hear and see some important things.

After my last post making the case that repentance is nothing short of giving our consent to die, I’ve struggled on a couple of different spiritual fronts.

The first will be familiar to anyone with experience trying to walk in faith in this world. After being so bold in talking about our calling as believers to die with Jesus on the cross, that idea was immediately put to the test in my own life. That’s not surprising. James wrote:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” James 1:2-4

That sounds great and I’m in. But there’s nothing easy about it and choosing to see moments of testing as a source of joy is actually just another facet of choosing to die.

The second source of conflict is perhaps less universal. It has to do with my reluctance to admit where this conversation about radical repentance is headed. Honestly, I’ve been arguing with God over the message taking shape in my heart and mind. Not because I don’t think it is true, but because I don’t relish being the one to share it. It’s a hard message, sure to draw fire.

Essentially, it’s the idea that we can’t truly come out of Babylon, as we are commanded to do, without being brutally honest with ourselves about all the ways that we are still in it. That in many ways we still love it. We cannot grasp the urgency and severity of what we must do to repent and be ready for our Lord’s coming unless we’re willing to face the truth about the total corruption of this world and our collusion with it.

Repentance involves confession, and confession can only follow honest self-examination.

That’s a long way from the feel-good gospel so commonly preached today.

The life of authentic faith is one of stark contrast with the world that we must not look away from. It demands a binary, either-or choice to serve God or Mammon. There is no middle ground. John didn’t pull any punches when he wrote:

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world” I John 2:15-17.

Unpacking what that means on the front lines of daily life requires uncomfortable and undoubtedly controversial truths that I’d rather not even think about, much less speak about publicly.

I’ve already stated in previous dispatches that nothing in this world is untouched by Satan’s deception and corruption. As strong as that declaration is, these past few weeks have been a painful awakening to the fact that it’s actually a massive understatement.

I’ve seen with fresh eyes that our world is deception. Not just parts of it; all of it. Satan has told a million lies that have corrupted everything we think we know about ourselves, about God and how we must live to survive. This can’t be overstated. The entire apparatus of the modern world — government, finance, science, education, health care, information and entertainment, religion and so much more — is the product of countless lies.

Admitting that and grasping the implications is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I know I’m not alone as many of you are coming to the same conclusion.

In the movie, The Truman Show, the main character slowly becomes aware that nothing in the world he knows and trusts is real. His entire life has been a carefully constructed and managed falsehood. In that story, the purpose of the deception is entertainment. He is unknowingly the star of a TV show watched by millions of people.

That scenario, as far-fetched as it sounds, is very close to the truth of our own lives. The only difference is who runs the show and why.

The lies we’re waking up to aren’t even very well crafted. It turns out the key to deception is not its cleverness, it’s our willingness to believe whatever we are told. Most people do whatever it takes to remain in the fiction, because it feels safer. But once you begin to see the truth it gets harder and harder to pretend you don’t — and it’s very important that we see.

Rejecting deception and receiving the truth has always been part of following Jesus. But we’re currently living in the moment the Bible foretold when Satan goes all in. The signs are clear that we are on the threshold of a whole new level of deception that will test our faith in ways we can barely even imagine. If you pay attention to the news at all you know what I’m talking about. The command to come out of Babylon, to abide in Christ and keep our eyes fixed on Him, has never been more urgent.

That’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve been chewing on for the past few weeks: I can’t go on pretending I don’t see it, but do I really want to be the messenger calling others to upend their comfortable view of the world? Am I really the right person for that job? Who cares what I think? Maybe the “time out” I felt was God telling me it’s okay to be quiet.

A breakthrough came when I realized that “time out” is the wrong way to describe where God has led me. It’s more accurate to say I’ve been put in spiritual rehab. Like an addict who finally admits he can’t continue living the old way. Or maybe like a brainwashed cult member fighting my way back to reality. And rehab is not an end, it’s a beginning.

At first, rehab involves seclusion, a time of raw detox and withdrawal. That’s true whether you’re addicted to chemicals or to false beliefs. It’s as if all your molecules are being disassembled and you’re pretty sure you won’t survive.

But you do, and then the real work begins. However, that’s getting ahead of the story. There’s a lot to say about that. We’ll come back to it in a future Dispatch.

For now, I realize that saying the world as we think we know it is a lie sets us down in a whole field full of rabbit holes. Each one is stuffed with people willing to argue forever to defend their point of view. I have no appetite for entering that fray.

For one thing, that’s the realm of the intellect and what I’m talking about is spiritual discernment. It’s enough for me to say I’m convinced we live in an age of unimaginable deception and to trust the Holy Spirit to work out the truth of that in everyone ready and able to hear it. If that’s you, He will be your guide. Seek Him and listen.

Now, for just about anyone, what I’m saying is hard enough, but for followers of Jesus, it gets worse.

Because living in a fake and deceptive world has left what we call the church deeply fractured and confused. We know that’s true, we might as well say it out loud. After centuries of evil gaslighting — much of it from within the church itself — we honestly don’t know who we are, what we are, where we are, or when. That adds up to this: we don’t know what to believe, which is why Christians are so often at each other’s throats. Jesus warned of this when He said:

“At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people” Matthew 24:10-11.

A little later in verse 24 He says that the deception will be so powerful it would even trick the elect, if that were possible.

There’s no way to escape the truth that that’s where we are today. Believers can’t take a step in any direction without stumbling into another bitter argument about who’s doing Christian faith right and who’s doing it very, very wrong. Everyone guards their particular rabbit hole like life depends on it.

And that’s the trap I’m determined to avoid — and which I urge you to avoid as well. Our purpose is not to prove a point but to perfect our faith by seeking refuge and strength in Christ alone.

The key to that — and to getting on with authentic, radical repentance — lies in the answer to a simple question: What does Satan hope to gain from all the lies? Knowing what he wants will point us in the direction we must go — the opposite way.

The answer is not complicated. Satan’s million lies all have a single, coordinated goal: to sow doubt about God’s supremacy and sovereignty over all things. Those are stations Satan claims for himself, as Isaiah wrote:

“You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God … I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High’” Isaiah 14:13-14.

But notice that Satan’s key strategy for accomplishing this is not to challenge God directly but to fight a proxy war — through God’s human children. All the deception we see around us is a continuation of the original lie Satan told in Eden.

He said, “You can be more than what God made you to be.”

It’s obvious that our world is saturated in that message.

But Satan’s claim to a throne of his own is just hot air … unless we believe it. He coaxes us into that belief by suggesting that we also deserve to rise above the place God gave us. In the ultimate bait and switch con, he entices us to worship him by exalting and worshipping ourselves.

Believing his lies and colluding with the culture that’s built upon them has made us the most idolatrous generation in history. The evidence for that is undeniable: we worship ourselves, even when making a show of worshipping God.

Revealing and renouncing Satan’s lies and repenting of our role in perpetuating them is the work of faith in our time. This is enormously difficult, which is why we don’t want to talk about it. It’s a severe test of our faith that can only be undertaken in complete dependence on the Holy Spirit within us. That’s why we must die to the old, sinful self that relentlessly clings to the world as it is.

Our task is to restore what Satan’s deception has taken from us — the fearful knowledge that the Lord our God is One. God is Almighty God and there are no other Gods before Him. He alone is the source and creator of all things. Everything in heaven and on earth exists for him and through Him.

Every lie, every edifice of falsehood dissolves in this truth. Truth is the weapon that sets us free.

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.

There is no better definition of Satan’s deception than this: It is “every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.”

The harsh truth is that this covers everything in this world. But it also contains the key to our victory: the knowledge of God as He truly is.

In the next Dispatch I will return to the idea that we all urgently need to enter spiritual rehab to reclaim this knowledge and the power it holds for demolishing strongholds. I will lay out a practical program for how we can do that.

Until then, grace and peace by yours in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Read transcript below

Summary

In this episode, Alan Wartes explores the concept of radical repentance, emphasizing its biblical roots and profound implications for believers. He discusses how true repentance involves a revolutionary, even violent, confrontation with our sinful nature, and the importance of dying to self to truly follow Christ.

Keywords

radical repentance, Christian faith, spiritual transformation, death to self, Jesus teachings, Christian growth, biblical repentance

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Personal Reflection on Consistency in Sharing

02:52 Introduction to Kathy’s Question on Radical Repentance

03:22 Defining Radical Repentance: Not a Different Echelon

04:01 Synonyms for Radical and Their Connotations

04:33 Jesus’ Statement on Bringing a Sword and Its Radical Implication

05:27 The True Nature of Repentance as Revolutionary

06:07 The Full Gospel: Beyond Salvation to Radical Calling

07:04 Repentance as Consent to Death and Transformation

08:13 The Power of Death in Christian Transformation

09:09 Following Christ Through Death to Life

09:32 The Cross as the Path to True Life

10:22 The Holy Spirit’s Role in Dead Self Transformation

11:28 Living Daily in Radical Surrender and Abiding in Christ

Transcript

Hi and welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.

In this episode I plan to address a question posed by one of our subscribers. She wants to understand why I so often use the word “radical” to describe repentance. It’s a great question that really made me think.

But first I want to acknowledge that it’s been three weeks since my last dispatch. I admit that’s a long interval. Partly, I allowed myself to be distracted by other things, some that were beneficial in themselves and others, not so much. I suspect everyone can relate to that.

On the other hand, I always want to guard against the impulse to come up with something to post just because the calendar says it’s time. I think that’s where a lot of the empty, lukewarm teaching comes from that is so common these days in Christian circles. That’s especially true in the realm of social media. Someone who is chasing an ever-larger online audience feels they can’t afford to be quiet for even a day. In that world, momentum, or the lack of it is real and to be silent is to be invisible.

That may be why so much of what we see and hear on platforms like this one is just a thicket of platitudes. Such posts are placeholders meant to be seen but not much else. Under the relentless pressure to post it’s hard to blame people for that.

Over time, though, so much empty noise has a hypnotic effect that hardens our hearts and dulls our ears to the truth. That is the unspeakably rich and radical calling we have received in Christ.

So, there is a time to speak and a time to be still and listen. The only algorithm I care about is what the Holy Spirit can do, first to inspire a message and then to deliver it exactly where it is needed.

That means this may not be the last gap between dispatches. If you are a paid subscriber and that feels like less value than you expected, please contact me. I’ll be more than happy to refund your support.

Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Now, on to Cathy’s question. Here’s what she wrote:

“You’ve mentioned in your messages something you call ‘radical repentance.’ How do you understand ‘radical repentance,’ and what is the difference between repentance without the adjective, and ‘radical repentance?’”

Great question. First, I don’t use the word “radical” to imply there is a different echelon of repentance, something that’s above and beyond ordinary repentance. The word is there to remind me that there is no such thing as “ordinary” repentance. Seen from the world’s point of view —from the perspective of our sinful nature — all repentance is radical.

Here’s a list of synonyms for the word radical:

· extreme

· revolutionary

· ultra

· fanatic

· violent

· subversive

I’m sure you’ll agree that these words all have negative connotations by modern standards. I was even tempted to remove “violent” from the list to avoid objections. But for reasons that will be clear in a moment, I believe it does belong in the context of repentance. If nothing else, it helps to explain a statement of Jesus that sounds jarring to a lot of people these days:

“Do not suppose I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” Matthew 10:34-36

Sounds pretty radical to me. I believe repentance, properly understood, is the reason.

True repentance is extreme, revolutionary, subversive and even violent in the sense that it confronts and tears down the status quo of relationships and other ways of being in the world.

Jesus preached this. John the Baptist preached it. But we’ve lost sight of this fact in our time in part because we are tangled up in that thicket of platitudes I just mentioned. So much of that messaging is soft, reassuring and comforting. It’s about making us feel better where we are and makes few demands of us.

To be sure, salvation from judgment for our sins, freely available to anyone who believes, is a tremendous source of comfort and hope. It is contained in the message of “glad tidings of great joy” the angels delivered when Jesus was born.

But that’s not the only part of the message. The full gospel of our redemption as sanctified and glorified sons and daughters of the Most High God involves an unspeakably ferocious calling — to repent.

Yes, ferocious.

But repentance is not ferocious if we think it simply a confession of guilt and acceptance of salvation. Nor is it the resolve, after salvation, to “do better” or to henceforth live your life for God. The old covenant and the law proved once and for all that you can’t do any of that. What’s called for is something completely revolutionary. Something radical.

Here’s the key point: Repentance is radical because it is nothing less than consenting to your own death.

We all want to skip to the stage where we share in the glory of our risen Lord. James and John said that part out loud when they asked Jesus to grant that they be seated on His right and left in the coming kingdom.

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” Matthew 20:22

Repentance is always radical because it escorts us to that question: can you choose to die to your old self?

There is no transformation in life more radical than death. You can’t be a little bit dead, or even mostly dead. Dead is all the way dead, or it’s still alive. That’s true of your sinful nature every bit as much as your physical body. Paul wrote in Romans 6:

“The death (Jesus) died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Jesus Christ.” Romans 6:10-11

To claim that new life, we must believe this and then follow in His footsteps. Late nineteenth century preacher Andrew Murray put it like this in his book “Abide in Christ:”

“There is no path to true life, to abiding in Christ, than that on which our Lord went before us — through death. At the first commencement of the Christian life, very few see this … They don’t yet know that nothing but death, the absolute surrender to death of all that is of nature, will suffice if the life of God is to be manifested in them with power.” Andrew Murray

Platitudes are stripped of this power because they attempt to steer us around the threshold we must all approach: the cross. The invitation — the command — that Jesus gave his disciples to follow Him did not end at Calvary.

If He had not paid the price for our sin that day, then their journey certainly would have ended. But His death and resurrection opened the door onward through which we must all follow.

The unimaginably good news is that when we consent to die with Him, then the process of putting to death our old self becomes work that the Holy Spirit completes in us. Our contribution is faith and the total surrender of any self-effort. Our part is to yield and to say “Yes!” Then what is dead is replaced by Christ himself living within us. In Galatians chapter 2 Paul wrote:

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live today, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20

But nothing about that is soft or easy or automatic. Drinking the cup that Jesus drank is the essence of radical repentance. It’s a solemn choice, a daily choice, to surrender our old self to death on the cross and then to keep it there by abiding in Christ in every moment.

There is so much more to say about this! Come back and let’s keep talking. Share this dispatch and leave a comment so your voice can be included in the conversation.

May God bless you and keep you as you learn to abide in Him!

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Read transcript below

Summary

In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes discusses the urgent need for believers to recognize the pervasive evil and deception in the world. He emphasizes the importance of coming out from the world’s corrupt systems and institutions, including the church, which has conformed to worldly ways. Wartes calls for radical repentance and a deeper understanding of the biblical prophecy regarding the end times, urging listeners to abandon their attachments to the world and embrace the truth of God’s word.

Chapters

00:00 The Wake-Up Call for Believers

04:33 The Process of Refinement and Revelation

11:01 The Urgency of Radical Repentance

Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Transcript

Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.

I hadn’t intended to continue last week’s Dispatch in a part two. I called that episode No Middle Ground and pointed out that the evil depicted in the recently released Epstein Files is a wakeup call to believers to get serious about what it means to follow Jesus. I discussed just how deeply the world is saturated with deception and evil.

There’s always a fine line to walk between being aware of what’s going on in the world and giving it so much attention that it breeds fear rather than leading to greater understanding about how to abide in Christ.

But every day now the spiritual front lines seem to come closer to home. That’s no accident. It’s happening now because time is growing short for believers to see the world for what it is and come out of it. So long as you think the world is kind of a mess, maybe, but with a lot of good stuff worth fighting for too, then you will not understand verses like this:

“Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” 2 Corinthians 6:17

To gather the courage needed to truly come out, you must be able to answer the questions: “Come out of what? Why?”

All the evidence of chaos in the world is pointing the followers of Jesus to a conclusion that we should have reached already, because it is clearly spelled out in the Bible. That is that this world is a total write off. That’s a blunt way to put it, I know, but no more so than when Peter wrote:

“But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” 2 Peter 3:5-7

What’s clear in the story, from Eden to the New Jerusalem, is that this world was not intended to last. God knew from the beginning what the wicked would do and that Satan would have rulership over the earth until the very end because of human rebellion. What we see all around us today is not failure, it’s fulfillment.

All of history has been a crucible meant to contain the heat necessary to refine the precious metal of God’s chosen. As it says in Psalm 66:

“For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.” Psalm 66:10

Jesus brought us to the Great Refiner by securing forgiveness for any who would believe. But it’s what happens next, when He places us in the fire, that truly makes us ready to share in the glory of Christ and reign with Him in the kingdom to come.

When we surrender to it, the heat of discipline and hardship for His sake drives evil from all its hiding places within our hearts and minds to it can be seen and rejected.

This feels like death, because it is. It is the death of that version of yourself that belonged to Satan. From the point of view of your old self, it is a catastrophe. It is, quite literally, the apocalypse. The Greek word apokalupsis means “revealing” or “unveiling” or “disclosure of hidden knowledge.” That’s not something I had ever heard until recently.

How many Christians realize that when we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we are asking for an apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it so that another can begin? The end of that world begins with the stark revelation of what it really is: thoroughly evil. John said so when he wrote:

“We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” 1 John 5:19

Understanding that, we have a chance to see that we, even as believers, have participated in creating and sustaining that evil world by believing the lies upon which it is built. The whopper that launched everything is that it is possible for us to make our own way in the world without God and that we might even be better off. That’s what Satan sold to Eve in the garden.

But the lie that binds most Christians to collusion with the enemy is that we must all compromise in some way or another and feed at Satan’s table to survive in this world. That’s very convenient for our sinful nature which wants to do so, even after we have believed.

Furthermore, we tell ourselves that this is the world God made, so we must make the most of it and get along the best we can.

That is not what the Bible says.

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” 1 John 2:15-17

No. This is Satan’s world. Someone might argue with that by quoting Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” I struggled with that apparent contradiction myself until I found a way to see it in which both things are true.

Imagine we are looking at a magnificent Manhattan skyscraper, and we know that it belongs to God. He conceived it and built it. Everything about it exists because of Him, all its artistry and marvelous workings.

Now we look again at the tenants of the building. They don’t own it, but God has given them the freedom to use it in any way they choose. Satan, because of what he achieved in Eden, owns the master lease and he oversees everything that happens there. Jesus cancelled that lease forever in His death and resurrection, but the final eviction is yet to come.

What we see all around us today is not failure, it’s fulfillment.

For now, though God owns the heavens and the earth, the human world within it is utterly lost. Not all the people, of course. Grace has made a way out for anyone who believes. But all the systems, institutions, industries and governments of the world are thoroughly corrupted by deception and evil.

Someone might say, surely you don’t include the church in that. How I wish that were true. The revelation of evil in the world today is not sparing the church. I don’t mean the sanctified body of Christ, which is an invisible work of the Holy Spirit.

I’m talking about the church infrastructure, material and philosophical, that seemingly exists now to serve and perpetuate itself. To be blunt, it has inherited the woes of the Pharisees by conforming itself to this world’s way of doing business.

And if the church can be shown to be corrupted, and it can, then what hope is there for the rest of society? Satan is a deceiver who rules everything that happens on earth. We have no reason to assume that his reach or his zeal for chaos is limited. The present apocalypse points to the opposite conclusion: his hand is in everything.

A lot of courageous followers of Jesus have begun unpacking that by questioning the pillars holding up everything we think we know, in science, history and what the Bible really says about where we are in the prophetic timeline and what is yet to come. It is apocalyptic, catastrophic work that must be done to propel us forcefully into radical repentance.

That’s the point of all this, that we finally see why we are called to come out of this world and cry out to the Holy Spirit for help doing it. The command to come out has never been more urgent or more plain.

Why? Because the Bible says that God intends to demolish the building he created and replace it with another. Not gradually remodel it. Destroy it. Listen to Revelation 21:

“Then I saw a ‘new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” Revelation 21:1

If the phone were to ring right now, wherever you are, and it was the police department telling you the have reliable information that a bomb is about to go off at your location, what would you do? I’m confident you wouldn’t hesitate to leave everything behind and flee. If you didn’t and insisted on clinging to all the stuff around you, we’d call that insane.

And yet, Satan’s deception is so powerful, so persuasive that he’s convinced us that the crazy ones are those who take God at His word and abandon everything in order to live.

The truth is we have received that phone call. God’s word plainly tells us how the story ends and what we must do to be saved. The hardest hearts among us just refuse to believe it and hang up. That’s heartbreaking. But far worse is what many Christians do: they believe, but then put the Lord on hold so they can finish up whatever they were doing when the call came.

Don’t do that. Open your eyes to the apocalypse of evil happening all around you. Drop everything and come out.

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Read transcript below

Keywords

spirituality, Jeffrey Epstein, Satan, Christian faith, truth, repentance, evil, spiritual battle, following Jesus, darkness

Summary

In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes discusses the recent revelations surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and the implications of these events on our understanding of evil in the world. He emphasizes the importance of discerning truth amidst the noise and recognizing the pervasive influence of Satan in society. Wartes calls for a radical repentance and a commitment to follow Jesus, highlighting the spiritual battle that Christians face against evil forces.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to the Spiritual Front

01:13 Facing Disturbing Truths

02:43 Understanding Satan’s Rule

05:03 The Nature of Our Struggle

06:47 The Call to Radical Repentance

Transcript

Hi. I’m Alan Wartes. Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front.

I must admit it has been more difficult than usual to discern what to speak about in this week’s Dispatch. I think the main reason for that is all the noise created by the recent release of information related to Jeffrey Epstein. In times like these it’s more important than ever to be still and be sure that our thoughts are truly guided by the Holy Spirit and not tainted by our own understanding.

It’s very tempting to contribute to the noise and miss God’s wisdom that leads us, under any circumstances, deeper into abiding in Christ as new creations. That’s our target, no matter what is going on around us.

Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

That said, I think there is understanding to be gained from these events, but only if we face them truthfully. So, please forgive the following blunt summary.

The federal government this week made public millions of digital files, emails and so forth, that appear to reveal a very disturbing fact. That people in the very top echelons of every sector of our society routinely engage in the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children in overtly satanic rituals. These possibly include torture, human sacrifice and even cannibalism.

So far, the identities of these people have mostly been withheld. That’s where much of the noise comes from in the news and social media spheres. There is a clamor for justice.

It’s impossible to overstate the evil all this describes.

As shocking as this may sound, I think who these particular people are doesn’t really matter in the big picture. Stay with me. I’m not minimizing the horror in these revelations or suggesting anyone should get a free pass.

We are promised that one day all the evil in the world will end and all the wicked will be punished, severely and forever.

But we must not forget that vengeance and judgment belong to God alone, especially for crimes like these.

That, paradoxically, sets us free to focus on the real truth being revealed in all this. It’s something we’ve heard before but have never really taken seriously.

What the Epstein files reveal, along with many other events in recent years, is that everything in our world is ruled by Satan and his followers. Everything.

The Christian church gives lip service to that idea but very few of us live like we actually believe it. There is much more to say about that, but for now just let it sink in.

Everything in our world is ruled by Satan and his followers.

Until you understand this fact, the call to come out of Babylon and live your life as a stranger and a foreigner in this world can seem a little over the top. You’ll misunderstand what’s at stake and go on making bargains with the devil in the name of getting along.

Once you grasp it, you’ll see that no earthy tools can threaten Satan’s rulership. So long as he is loose in the world there will never be a shortage of people who will say yes to the offer he made to our Lord in the wilderness, as it says in Matthew chapter four:

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.” Matthew 4:8-9

That’s right. That wasn’t just for Jesus. He said no, but many do not. This is why Paul wrote that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood.

Because the wicked are like grass. No matter how hard you try to pull them up by the roots on your own they will just grow back. While Satan rules the world, there will always be someone else ready to love the darkness and hate the light.

We’ve heard what Paul wrote, but let’s remind ourselves anyway:

“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. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, after your have done everything, to stand.”

Ephesians 6:12-17

Our struggle is not against people, but against Satan himself and all his hierarchy of evil.

Do we put on the armor of God to win political battles? To reform society with better laws? Stronger enforcement? Military victories?

No. That is precisely what the people of Israel expected Jesus to do as Messiah. Our Lord explicitly rejected that way of thinking and living because he understood where the fight really lay.

So where is the front line in our spiritual battle with evil? Put another way, what is Satan fighting to achieve that the armor of God prepares us to resist?

The easy, cliché answer is that he wants to stop people from believing that Jesus is the Son of God. But even the demons believe that and testify to it. Matthew chapter 8 tells the story of two demon-possessed men who came out from tombs where they lived when Jesus approached.

“They were so violent that no one could pass that way. ‘What do you want with us, Son of God?’ they shouted. ‘Have you come to torture us before the appointed time?’”

Matthew 8:28-29.

No, Satan is not threatened when someone simply professes to believe. Words are cheap.

He is desperate, however, to prevent us from hearing and acting on the invitation Jesus gives to all who genuinely believe:

“Follow me.”

We take up the fight when we follow him.

If we take that phrase literally, it means we walk in his footsteps where they lead. And they lead us inevitably to the cross. That is not simply where his death counted against our debt. Thank God for that, but the cross is a gate we must follow him through in our own choice to die to all that belongs to the life we lived in Satan’s world.

Jesus said in Matthew 16:

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

Matthew 16:24-25

This is radical repentance.

If there is a lesson to be learned in the unmasking of deep darkness and evil in our world, it is this: there is no middle ground in this fight. There is no gray area. Jesus was not kidding when he said it’s impossible to serve both God and Mammon — and yet most Christians attempt to do exactly that.

The Epstein files are a wakeup call.

Wake up and follow.

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Chorus

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a man like me

I was lost and now I’m found, I was blind but now I see

Oh, oh, oh, oh

Now I … I can see.

Verse 1

We don’t have to walk this road lost and on our own

Our Father made a way for us to come home

Jesus gave us living proof of what we’re meant to be

We can be like Him if we will believe

Chorus

Verse 2

Now I know I’m not alone when I feel afraid

When I can’t forget mistakes I have made

Jesus took away my sin and make my life brand new

There was only one thing I had to do … just believe!

Solo

Verse 3

Maybe there will come a time when I understand

We He’s chose me as part of His plan

For now it’s good enough to see I can just let go

Amazing Grace is all I need to know

Chorus

Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a man like me

I was lost and now I’m found, I was blind but now I see

Jesus saved us, now we … we are free

Read transcript below

Summary

In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes addresses the pervasive fear stemming from the current state of the world. He emphasizes the importance of discerning which news to engage with and the power of prayer as a response to fear. Wartes discusses the biblical perspective on fear, encouraging listeners to find courage in their faith and to understand that turmoil is a response to God’s plan, not a victory for evil. He concludes with a powerful prayer aimed at fostering hope and courage in troubling times.

Takeaways

The state of the world causes widespread fear.

Prayer is essential for overcoming fear.

Believers are called to discern news wisely.

Faith is the foundation for courage in fear.

Turmoil reflects a response to God’s plan.

Satan’s power is ultimately defeated.

Courage comes from understanding God’s sovereignty.

The Bible encourages us to not be afraid.

We should be beacons of peace and fearlessness.

God’s purpose will be fulfilled in these times.

Chapters

00:00 Facing the Fear of the World

03:07 The Power of Prayer in Troubling Times

08:31 Understanding God’s Sovereignty Over Evil

Transcript

Hi and welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.

Here’s something I imagine is on just about everyone’s mind these days — everyone with an internet connection, at least. I’m talking about the scary state of the world. We can’t deny there are signs of severe distress in every direction.

And people are really afraid.

Jesus told us to expect wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes and famines in diverse places. We’re used to thinking of those things in the traditional, literal sense — and that is surely included in what the Lord meant.

But what’s harder to deal with is that the foundations are also shaking under the institutions and systems we depend on. The reliable landmarks we’ve steered by in worldly affairs are teetering and shifting around all at once.

No wonder people are afraid, including many followers of Jesus. Here’s a text message I received last week from someone very close to me. She wrote:

“I was just scrolling through email, reading headline after headline that caused fear to rise up in me. I stopped in horror, realizing I was the victim of fear mongering. But what should I do? Stop reading the headlines? I concluded that I need to discern which stories I should ignore and which ones I need to pray earnestly about. The most important thing is to stop being afraid.”

Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Her message came at exactly the right moment, because I had recently been struggling with the same thing. Most of us can probably say that. Maybe we’re frightened by different headlines, but the effect is the same — the state of the world scares us.

The temptation, as she wrote, is to just look away. Stop paying attention in order to stop feeling afraid.

But I can never get that to feel quite right. In Hebrews, the Bible says that faith is the “evidence of things not seen,” not the denial of things that we do see and must live with every day.

If nothing else, I think that being blissfully ignorant makes me less available to others who are terrified and in need of comfort. As I said, that’s just about everyone.

In any case, getting this person’s message was good timing, because God had just led me to an answer to that question, “What do we do in response to all this upheaval and the fear we feel?”

It’s no surprise, really, that this answer came in the form of a powerful prayer. Prayer is the superpower God gave us for facing all of life’s scary challenges.

This is what Paul wrote to the Philippians:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, 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.”

Philippians 4:6-7

Yes! That’s what we’re looking for. Not just the absence of fear but transcendent peace.

I’ll share the specific prayer God showed me in a moment, because I believe it will help overcome our reluctance to pray just because we don’t know what to pray.

But before that, here’s an idea I think can also shed some light. It helped me, at least.

First, I asked myself, “As followers of Jesus, why are we afraid of world events?” Surely, we haven’t forgotten the 365 times the Bible encourages us to “fear not” and “don’t be afraid.”

In speaking about scary world events at the end of the age, Jesus himself said:

“See to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen.”

Matthew 24:6

So why is it so hard to read headlines without feeling afraid?

Part of the answer to that seems almost too simple at first glance but is in fact very powerful. It involves how I think and what I believe.

I feel afraid because I still believe that evil is evidence that Satan has a plan and that it’s working. Even more, I believe the lie that I am still vulnerable to that plan. That is a lie and if you doubt that, read Psalm 91:

“Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’”

Psalm 91:1-2

Read the whole thing to find a real shot of courage!

Here’s the truth: Turmoil in the world is not Satan’s plan. It is his desperate response — to God’s plan. To God’s already completed plan.

Can you see the difference? It’s an important foundation to lay beneath the prayer I’ll share in a moment.

If I believe that Satan has a “plan” to somehow compete with God, that credits him with power and sovereignty that don’t belong to him. He lost everything when our savior died and rose again. It’s true that God, according to the wisdom of his plan, left Satan free in the world to sew chaos and deception for a time. But that changes nothing about the total defeat he suffered.

Satan is the one with reason to fear — and the rampage of evil we see around us is evidence that he knows it. As it’s written in Revelation 12:

“But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.”

Revelation 12:12

Yes, we live in the world of his fury, but that is no cause for fear.

Listen to Isaiah 35:

“Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, ‘Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you.’”

Isaiah 35:3-4

The Most High God is the only God. There is only one plan. Courage and confidence in scary times like these must rest on a foundation of immovable faith in that.

So, here is the prayer I want to share with you. It has made a huge difference for me as I face my fear in these end times.

Our Father in heaven, in all the world’s upheaval, may your will be done and your purpose be fulfilled. May these times spark a hunger in those who are called but have not yet believed and in believers who have not yet come out of Babylon to fully abide in you.

May all these things prepare the ground for the coming Day of the Lord, a day of judgment and punishment for the wicked and glorious redemption for the righteous who are hidden in Christ Jesus.

Father, lead us to wait and watch for his coming with patience, courage, wisdom, discernment, faith and hope. In these times make us a beacon of fearlessness and peace that draws people to you.

May God bless you and keep you — and give you courage.

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Read transcript below

Keywords

salvation, lukewarm teaching, Holy Spirit, new covenant, intimacy with God, spiritual growth, faith, forgiveness, Christian teaching, relationship with God

Summary

In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes explores the deeper meaning of salvation beyond mere forgiveness, emphasizing the importance of recognizing lukewarm teaching in the Christian faith. He discusses the role of the Holy Spirit in guiding believers and the necessity of cultivating a personal relationship with God to discern true teachings from distorted ones. The conversation encourages listeners to seek intimacy with God and to be vigilant against teachings that do not lead to spiritual growth.

Takeaways

God’s goal in providing salvation goes beyond what we think.

Forgiveness is just the starting place for believers.

Jesus aims to transform us into new creations.

Lukewarm teaching often relies on intellectual arguments.

Ask God for discernment in recognizing teachings.

The Holy Spirit empowers us to understand God’s will.

Lukewarm teaching can lead to a life of complacency.

Regular Bible reading helps confront distorted teachings.

The New Covenant offers a direct relationship with God.

Intimacy with God is essential for spiritual growth.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

01:10 Understanding Salvation Beyond Forgiveness

02:52 Recognizing Lukewarm Teaching

06:04 The Role of the Holy Spirit in Teaching

08:48 Confronting Lukewarm Teaching and Cultivating Relationship with God

Transcript

Hi! I’m Alan Wartes and this is Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. Welcome.

I especially want to welcome and thank all the new subscribers who have joined Dispatches in the past month. Your support and your presence are extremely valuable, thank you.

I encourage you to leave a comment when you have something to add or ask so we can include your voice in the conversation. Also, please share these dispatches with anyone you think would welcome them.

Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This week, I’d like to address a question posed by a subscriber after hearing last week’s episode called Phase Change.

In it, I shared that God’s goal in providing salvation in Jesus goes way beyond what most people think. We get easily entangled in the idea that the whole point is to rescue us from the judgment and death we deserve because of rebellion and sin.

We do need that, I said, but only as a starting place. Forgiveness had to be accomplished to pave the way for what happens next — our complete rebirth as new creations in Christ.

Jesus didn’t spring us from jail on death row and then leave us standing on the street with nothing but a pardon and best wishes for a better future.

It is God’s plan to take you home from there; clean you up and treasure you as his child. He desires to set you completely free from everything that landed you in prison in the first place.

To make that possible — because we cannot do it ourselves — he offers to live within you and do all that needs to be done by you, for you. That’s the new covenant.

Your part is to simply to believe and surrender to this wholeheartedly, with nothing held back.

Hang in there, I’m getting to the question, I promise.

In making that argument I said it’s time for us to get to the bottom of why, then, so many believers seem stuck in a sort of half-life. We’re forgiven, but don’t yet experience the promised rivers of living water flowing through our lives if we believe.

It’s time, I said, to stop listening to teaching that leads us into this kind of lukewarm fugue state as believers.

That’s what prompted one viewer to ask, “How do we recognize lukewarm, status quo teaching when we see it?”

It’s a really important question.

But I want to repeat something I said in my very first dispatch: I don’t have any big-brain credentials or special claim to authority. I’m not a psychologist, sociologist or theologist.

I’m just a follower of Jesus, like you, with a lot of years in the trenches trying to work out my faith in the real world.

But I am a writer. That means I can boil things down into bullet lists of key points like a boss.

So, in response to this question, that’s what I did.

I came up with seven telltale characteristics of lukewarm teaching and how to spot them. They’re not bad, if I do say so myself.

Then, I leaned into the next step, which is to put some meat on the bones of each point.

I wrote out the question again: How do we recognize lukewarm teaching when we see it?

Number one: It is overly intellectual, relying too much on cerebral arguments.

I jotted down Proverbs 3:5-6:

“Lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight.”

Proverbs 3:5-6

Then I looked at that. I looked at the cursor blinking at me for more. And I suddenly realized that this advice applied to all six of my other points.

It was as if the Holy Spirit said, “Hmm, you may be on to something there.”

As my wife Issa likes to say, God’s funny. He and I had a good laugh, I can tell you.

So, there may come a time when it’s right to share those bullet point ideas with you, but for now, this is me backing up and starting over. There is a perfect answer that actually contains all possible answers

How do we recognize lukewarm teaching when we see it?

Ask God.

After all, my whole premise has been that this is what Jesus’ death and resurrection purchased for us — unhindered access to our Father as his children. Reborn, restored, full of power and knowledge.

Don’t take my word for it, read what God promised in Jeremiah 31:

“‘I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will by my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,’ declares the Lord.”

Jeremiah 31:33-34

The bottom line is, if you have placed your faith in Jesus as your savior and king, then you don’t need anyone to teach you anything.

At the moment Jesus died, the veil separating people from the Most Holy Place in the temple in Jerusalem was torn in two, by God’s own hand. That didn’t happen so that a select few special people could go in and bring back God’s wisdom to the rest of us.

That’s the old way! And it didn’t work.

The veil was torn for you. Jesus died so that by the Holy Spirit he himself could live within in you. You are the new temple of the living God and Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant God has made directly with you.

Jesus is our high priest now, and we need no other.

I’m not saying we should never listen to each other. I’m not contradicting Paul who said that some are gifted by the Holy Spirit to teach others.

What I’m saying is that Jesus set us free from bondage to any teaching that does not lead to “life, in abundance.” That doesn’t lead us deeper into the paradoxical freedom of complete surrender to God’s will.

Perhaps, lukewarm teaching is best defined by what it doesn’t call forth in your life.

Now, here are a couple of things to keep in mind as we all try to make this work in daily life.

First, your sinful nature — that part of you that still believes Satan’s lies — wants to hear lukewarm teaching. It craves it, in fact. That’s because it’s not demanding. It provides cover every time you cling to sinful thoughts and behavior. Only the Holy Spirit within you can overcome that as you surrender to his guidance.

How? Start by listening to what Paul wrote to the Colossians:

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

Colossians 3:2-4

Second, the one thing all lukewarm teaching has in common is that it cherry-picks, distorts or outright ignores God’s Word. We must confront that the same way Jesus did by saying, “It is written….”

Here’s the key: You’ll have an easier time doing that if you are regularly reading the Bible yourself and seeking understanding directly from God.

The new covenant didn’t just deliver you from hell — it delivered you into a new life in which you confidently approach God as his child.

Cultivating this relationship and surrendering your whole self to it is not only how to recognize teaching that leads in a different direction — but also how to avoid being deceived by it.

May God bless you and keep you — and guide you into this intimacy with him.

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Read transcript below

Summary

In this episode of “Dispatches from the Spiritual Front,” Alan Wartes explores the struggle many Christians face between living in the world and embracing a new life in Christ. He emphasizes that faith in the gospel should not leave believers feeling stranded between two worlds, but rather empower them to live fully in the freedom that Christ offers. Wartes discusses the concept of divided living, referencing biblical passages that highlight the importance of choosing to serve God over worldly systems. He encourages listeners to reject lukewarm teachings and embrace their identity as new creations in Christ, emphasizing that this transformation is not just a one-time event but an ongoing process of conversion.

Wartes uses the metaphor of ice melting into water to illustrate the transformation believers undergo when they accept their new life in Christ. He stresses the importance of believing in this new identity and surrendering to the Holy Spirit to fully experience the freedom and power that comes with it. The episode concludes with a call to action for listeners to open the door to new life and fully embrace the promises of God, encouraging them to let go of their old selves and step into the flow of eternal life.

Takeaways

Living half a life of faith is not okay.

We can’t serve both God and mammon; it’s impossible.

The new creation has come; the old has gone.

Titles

Embracing New Life: The Transformation in Christ

From Ice to Water: The Journey of Spiritual Conversion

Sound bites

“A house divided against itself can’t stand.”

“The new is here. Present tense, ours for the taking.”

“To be water requires you to cease being ice entirely.”

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Spiritual Living

00:56 The Struggle Between Two Worlds

04:44 Understanding Spiritual Conversion

08:24 Embracing New Life in Christ

09:59 Call to Action: Entering New Life

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes.

If you’ve found your way to this podcast, then you’re probably ready, as I am, to stop pretending that the average common way of Christian living in this world is all there is. You feel it in your bones, that faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ was never meant to leave us stranded and flailing in no-man’s land between two worlds.

And yet we have to admit it, that is how most Christians live today.

On one hand, we still live as if we’re subject to the rules of this world, set by the ruler of this world, Satan. And on the other, we know we are called to a new way of life, a holy way, but it’s on a very high shelf and we can’t reach it.

Paul described this as a warning in Galatians 5:

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery”

Galatians 5:1.

Those who try to live a severed, burdened life will always fail to some degree at both halves because a house divided against itself can’t stand. Jesus said, we can’t serve both God and mammon, meaning the whole world system. We have to pick.

He didn’t say it’s tricky to serve both. He said it’s impossible. And when we see life as a tug of war between these two that we have to fight, guess which side wins? Inch by inch or maybe in a moment of crisis, we fall back on what we know best, the world’s way.

And then we read, where Paul wrote to the Romans in chapter 8:

“No, in all these we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I’m convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present or the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”

Romans 8:37-38

It’s really tragic that these words meant to be the greatest pep talk of all time can sound and feel like an indictment, like an accusation.

Because in divided living, I don’t feel much like a conqueror. I feel separate from the love of God most of the time. Verses like these can make us want to run and hide from God because we feel as naked as Adam in the garden.

It’s past time for us to get to the bottom of this. It’s time to reject the status quo lukewarm teaching we’ve heard from so-called leaders who are also desperate, in desperate need of the truth. They just don’t know it.

Living half a life of faith is not okay, and it’s not what God intends for us.

Here is the truth that few have yet to fully grasp. Paul left no room for conditions or caveats in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 when he said:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here!”

2 Corinthians 5:17.

In my NIV translation, there’s even an exclamation point there. The new is here! Present tense, hours for the taking. Hallelujah.

Now, God is faithful beyond all description in keeping His part of the promise of the New Covenant. So if we struggle, if we’re stuck still looking at the promise of new life as if from the outside in, then the reason why must lie in our own persistent confusion.

I think it would help if we could better visualize what it means to become something completely new and yet still be ourselves. I mean, what does that even look like?

A perfect picture of this is found in nature, or in your kitchen for that matter. I’m talking about what happens when ice becomes water. Physicists call it phase change, and they define it as the conversion of matter from one state into another.

I mean, we’ve all seen it. When ice has absorbed enough heat, it becomes something totally different, completely new. It’s chemically unchanged, but you wouldn’t know that by how it looks or feels or behaves.

I live in Colorado, so I’m very familiar with this wonderful image of a frozen stream melting in spring, releasing water to flow away and join the awakening life of the earth.

It’s no accident that we use the word conversion in both cases to describe ice becoming water and a person becoming a new creation. This is what being in Christ is meant to do. Not just to cancel the debt, but to literally convert anyone who believes from a state of frozen bondage to sin and death into something new, free and full of power in Him.

Now, we need to stop there and clear up some common confusion. Most people think the conversion we’re talking about happens all at once, when a person first confesses their sins and believes they are forgiven through the power of Christ’s sacrifice and resurrection.

Now to be sure, that is the essential door we must all come to and walk through for any of this to be available to us. But what I’m talking about is what happens next.

Because it is quite possible to believe your sins are forgiven and washed clean by the blood of Jesus and still not believe that that very same sacrifice secured for you the right to be made into something entirely new.

That is what leaves us stuck and torn between two worlds. That is why so many believers today live in frustration and defeat. I mean, what would it look like if ice had the power to choose, despite the freely given heat of the sun, to stay teetering between frozen bondage and liquid freedom? In that state, it really could be neither.

So here’s what we must do to break this impasse and fully embrace the conversion into new life that Jesus bought for us.

First, believe it. Accept that new life is yours in the power of the Holy Spirit in the new covenant. The Bible is absolutely filled with promises to bolster that belief. Find them, claim them.

Second, surrender to this with all your heart. Let go of your old self. Let the Holy Spirit take over.

To be water requires you to cease being ice entirely. There is no middle way.

When you let go, you will enter the flow of eternal life, carried along by God’s will toward his kingdom as he promised. Jesus invited us to this very thing when he spoke to the church in Laodicea in Revelation 3. Now don’t miss that point. He was talking to believers who had found the door of redemption but stopped short of walking all the way through it into new life.

“Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person and they with me.”

Revelation 3:20

Kind of a no-brainer, really, when you put it like that. Why wouldn’t we do it?

May God bless you and keep you and lead you into new life. See you next time.

Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it.