Spiritual

 Back in the day, they called it being religious. Today, they call it being spiritual. Anytime I hear someone say they are spiritual, usually a thirty-something with one too many tattoos and a blank, lifeless stare, I throw up a little bit in my mouth because the spirituality of which they speak is something of their own creation that has no resemblance to the pure and undefiled religion that James speaks of further in his epistle. Yet, somehow, the people who drone on about being spiritual have convinced themselves that they will end up in some version of a paradise, not necessarily the Christian heaven, but maybe Valhalla, Sutala, Jannah, or perhaps even Svarga, which is a blending of two heavens into one that silly people came up with to appease a larger percentage of the populace.

There is only one heaven, the place that Jesus went to prepare for His faithful. At the risk of sounding repetitive, there is also only one way to His heaven, and that is through Him.

James 1:26, “If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, that one’s religion is useless.”

I don’t mean to rile up the Beth Moore fans anew, but just because you think it you don’t become it, whatever that it might be. You can have vision boards and manifest, speak into existence, bind, loose, and stand on the promise of your astrological sign, but all of that is useless and nothing more than self-deception if you are not being transformed into the image of Jesus.

I’ve been accused of picking on the female false prophetesses and teachers. In my defense, I haven’t yet heard a man say he was teleported to heaven in a porta-potty or that you would have pet dinosaurs in heaven or that they went back in time to have a confab with Eve, yes, that Eve. When I run across a man who is so brazen in his lies, then I will speak about him as heartily as I do their female counterparts.

I’m equally offended by false prophets as I am by false prophetesses; one does not offend me more than the other because of their gender.

If anyone thinks they are religious but don’t have the fruit to back it up, they are deceiving themselves. Some will stand before the throne of judgment fully convinced in their self-deception until they will be told to depart from before His all-knowing eyes. Jesus echoes the same sentiment, warning of the same consequences.

Why can’t you let people be? Why do you have to make people feel uncomfortable by insisting that they judge themselves and their lives before they stand before the throne of judgment? Because once you’re before the throne, it’s too late to do anything about it.

Jesus loved you enough to warn you; Paul, Peter, James, Jude, John, Luke, and all the other writers of the Bible loved you enough to warn you; why would I love you any less?

There are a lot of people headed to hell thinking they’re going to heaven, and that breaks my heart.

The shock of it will be doubly worse for ones such as these because evil men who lived evil lives had no expectation of ending up in heaven, but lukewarm people who were justified by false shepherds kind of do.

It’s expecting one thing and getting the opposite that really crushes you. I failed my first driver’s test at the age of sixteen. Up until the mustachioed man with the guayabera shirt and the pit stains told me I’d failed, I was wholly confident that I’d passed with flying colors. I’d kept my hands at the ten and two positions, signaled, and nailed the parallel parking, and the only thing I was thinking about was whether or not I was going to smile or strike a serious pose in my license photo.

Then he informed me that I hadn’t passed. The reasons were twofold, but I’d stopped listening by then. It had something to do with turning into the second lane rather than the first when I turned left, and not turning my head to check for cars when I changed lanes. I was numb. I didn’t care about his reasoning; I’d failed when every expectation was that I’d be walking away with a license in my pocket.

It crushed me, and it took me a few days to get back in the right headspace and reschedule another test. I passed the second one, but it was a different instructor, so maybe that had something to do with it.

When it comes to eternity, there are no second chances. You don’t get a redo; you can’t ask for a different judge, and you can’t reschedule life, hoping to learn from the mistakes of your first go-round. We’re not Buddhists, and we don’t believe the mosquito we just mushed into a glob was a reincarnated in-law.

One life is all you get, so make sure you don’t waste it or live with the impression that you can defy the Word of God and still end up walking the halls of heaven someday. Live each day as though it were the beginning of your forever, being ever aware of the difference between thinking about being saved and being saved. One is an unrealized hope or plan; the other is being a child of God with all the afferent benefits and protections. The day is almost upon us when those benefits and protections will mean all the difference between walking through the fire or being consumed by it.

Hacky as it may sound, since it’s so often repeated, everyone gets eternity. It’s just a matter of where you spend yours that has yet to be decided. Location is everything; just ask a real estate agent.

With love in Christ,

MIchael Boldea, Jr.