The Mystery of Marriage

What a weekend.  My migraine didn't go away until Sunday night sometime.  Unfortunately my daughter managed to catch a fever.  I've never seen her so tired, or unwilling to eat or play at all.  She just wanted to lie down, and if you moved her or disturbed her she would start crying.

   Poor little pudding.  I did manage to spoil my wife a little for mother's day.  I made a her a nice breakfast and we attempted to go for a nice picnic in Bragg Creek.  Good god that place was mobbed.  I've never seen so many people in that area.  It looks like the place isn't as secret as I once thought it was.  What a shame.

   It was hot, around 30 degrees, and Cassidy was really starting to make it obvious she wasn't feeling good at all.  So we quickly ate our picnic and drove back into town.  The rest of our evening last night was spent in the basement watching a little TV and taking care of our little sick girl.

  I DID get to see Iron Man 3 on Friday.  That was alot of fun.  I particularly liked the trailer for Superman.  There's this moment where Superman squatted and seems to be summoning up all this power and then takes off in flight.  And it hit me... When Jesus snatches his ecclesia home, that will be very much what we become.  With bodies transformed to be able to handle the vagaries of space...  We'll be more super than Superman EVER was.  Now that's just TOO cool.

Understanding the Church

While I despise institutional religion, I absolutely love the beauty of Christ's body.  There is a harmony to it that sings throughout the Bible.  To truly understand it though, we have to go all the way back to the beginning.

Genesis 2:21 Then Yahweh Elohim caused a stupor to fall on the human. While he was sleeping, he took one of his angular organs and closed up the flesh over it's place. (CLNT)

  Most translations refer to it as the rib, which is not an accurate translation for the part God removed.  The hebrew word used here is tsa-la which means side, corner, chamber.  If we put that together, it was an angular hollow object that God removed from the man.

Genesis 2:22 Yahweh Elohim built the angular organ that He had taken from human into a woman and brought her to the human. (CLNT)

  So what was this organ that was taken from the man?  Quite possibly it was the Uterus.  Up until the woman came on the scene, he was the only progeny for the human race.  It was quite likely he was asexual, having both organs and able to procreate successfully on his own.

  Once God separated the sexual organs and created the distinction between Man and Woman, suddenly some things become very clear.  God pronounces;

Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man shall forsake his father and his mother; he will cling to his wife, and both of them will be one flesh. (CLNT)

  Get it?  This is why men pursue women.  This is why marriages are made and why children are created in this way.  It's a divine construction creating out of ONE - TWO.

  I'm going back this far, to illustrate some very profound truths about the Church, which I will have to go into tomorrow as I've completely run out of time.

Travis Penner

Come, Let us Love One Another

  So, yesterday I had a migraine all day long.  I spent the majority of the day hidden in the basement.  I bottled 29 delicious bottles of wine that has taken 8 months to reach a state of perfection.  And I gotta tell you, it tastes damn good now.  The wait was worth it.  Although, personally, I hope the next batch, which is currently fermenting, doesn't take as long to turn out well.

  My apologies for yesterday's blog posts.  It seems that when I copy/pasted my verses it changed the formatting on my text.  Mildly irritating, but for those of you who were wondering what those huge white boxes were - I encourage you to go back and reread the blog.  I think you'll find that it makes much better sense now.

All You Need is Love

  Once I left religion I knew I still loved God, I still of loved Jesus - yet I could no longer follow the path of wretched selfishness that religion presented.  Honestly, it was the most maddeningly unloving form of worship.  I could not stomach it anymore.  When you build a religion based on self-salvation, how can it be anything else?

  Yes, you heard me right.  Every religion, including the Christian one is based on the saving of one's self.  Oh, yes Jesus has a token performance in the Christian religion but come on.  What else is "praying Jesus into your heart", or "Making a wise decision", or Baptism and the call to live a righteous life by following the 10 commandments and whatever else the creed of the Churches give you?

2 Timothy 3:4-5 fond of their own gratification rather than fond of God;
5 having a form of devoutness, yet denying its power. (CLNT)

  Having left, I purposed to keep my faith as simple as possible as I pursued the truth and prayed that Jesus would reveal a better way to me.  I took these as my guiding lights;

Matthew 22:36-40

36 "Teacher, what is the great precept in the law?"

37 Now He averred to him, "You shall be loving the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with you whole comprehension.

38 This is the great and foremost precept.

39 Yet the second is like it: 'You shall be loving your associate as yourself.'

40 On these two precepts is hanging the whole law and the prophets." (CLNT)

Acts 15:18-29

28 For it seems good to the holy spirit and to us in nothing to be placing one more burden on you save these essentials:

29 to be abstaining from idol sacrifices, and blood, and what is strangled and prostitution; from which, carefully keeping yourselves, you will be well engaged. Farewell!"

This seemed good to me.  Lets see... I don't sacrifice to idols, check.  I don't eat blood, check.  I'm not big on strangulation, so I should be good there, check.  And prostitution isn't all that appealing so... check!  Paul sure kept it simple!

As for Loving God, well, this is what I was doing by leaving Church.  I couldn't love him if I continued to be part of an institution.  It seemed so... wrong to be part of that.  I could love other people either, if I continued in that institution.  Love was my sole meditation for years after I left.

Can I condemn a homosexual?  If God created him or her this way?  No, this cannot be loving.

Can I judge someone else and pass hellish sentence on them? No... I don't think the God who himself claimed that LOVE is his identity, would do such a thing. How perverse!

If you truly want to approach God and understand his Son Jesus, you must do it by the lamplight of Love.  1 Cor 13 is the simplest description of love, yet love is so complex that it confounds the pharisees and religious men of this age. 

Before I finish for the weekend I want to leave you with this last thought.  The God of love, the one true God is at PEACE with you.

Are you feeling shame or guilt?  Are you being imposed upon to go to Church for fear of seperation from God?  Are you being told that he is angry and vengeful and wants to punish you?  Then take peace from this... God is conciliated to you.

The definition of conciliated is "To become friendly or agreeable".  God is FRIENDLY to you.  And if you don't believe me, then read

2 Corinthians 5:20-21

20 For Christ, then, are we ambassadors, as of God entreating through us. We are beseeching for Christ's

sake, "Be conciliated to God!"

21 For the One not knowing sin, He makes to be a sin offering for our sakes that we may be becoming God's righteousness in Him.

It is all already done for you.  There is NOTHING more you need to do.  No prayer, baptism, or any other act can do what Jesus has already done.  So... Be at peace - God loves you, and so do I.


Ephesians 2:8
8 For in grace, through faith, are you saved, and this is not out of you; it is God's approach present,
9 not of works, lest anyone should be boasting.


Have a good weekend,

Travis Penner

The Stripper VS The Pharisee

VS 

  After I posted that particular blog message I realized that perhaps I may not have been clear.  In my brevity (and in the case of a 2 year old constantly wanting my attention) I may have been too brief.

  Let me be clear.  I am not suggesting we all jump into a flood of dissipation.  However, let me highlight some things so that my point may be fully understood.

  I am trying to demonstrate the inate repugnance of the pharisee.  Many of you may have been around religious people and something in you just recoils from them.  Perhaps you tolerate it, good manners after all. Or perhaps you don't, because you are more honest in who you are than most of us.  I truly believe this repugnance is god given, we do not wish to be around pharisees.  Inately we understand there is a deep seated hypocrisy in them.  This is why I call them spiritual vampires.  Jesus was much less polite in how he termed them.  This is what he said;

Matthew 23:15
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are. (NIV)

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are going about the sea and the dry land to make one proselyte, and whenever he may be becoming one, you are making him more than double a son of Gehenna than you are.(CLNT)

  How would you like to be called a child of destruction?  That IS in essence what these pharisees are.  They are leading people into destruction, out of their overweening religious pride.  The whole of Matthew 23 is a real doozy, if you ever needed a list of "How to identify a pharisee" that's a good one.

  Like I said, sex is like holy water to a vampire, as it is to a pharisee.  The Christian religious world is so hung up on sex.  The greater issues, like, lust for power, selfish ambition, abandonment of the family (too much time out there converting more sons of destruction I suspect), and learning to correctly cut the word of truth are far more important than something that is naturally god given.  Yes, I said that.  Sex is natural and god given.  Christians can be so dysfunctional about sex.

  Here are two other sexy points I'm going to make.

  The pharisees like to heap up tons of laws regarding sexual relations.  Like that really ever works.  

Matthew 23:1-4
Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: ² “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.³ So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. ⁴ They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. (NIV)

More Rules only bring an increased desire to break them.

Romans 7:9-11
 ⁹ Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. ¹⁰ I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. ¹¹ For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.

Recognizing this, Paul the Apostle of grace gave the gentiles very few "laws" to stick to..

Acts 21:25
²⁵ As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.”(NIV)

Whoops!  The translators got that last word wrong... let's correct that;

25 Now concerning those of the nations who have believed, we write an epistle, deciding they are to guard themselves from idol sacrifice, besides from blood also, and what is strangled, and from prostitution." (CLNT)

Wasn't that sneaky?  Let's just change a word here, and we can have a whole grab bag of sexual sins to heap on our Churches.  Disgusting.  I have seen more people twisted into unnatural and perverse human beings by the twisting of the scriptures to guilt them regarding the very natural expression of humanity that God has given us.

One last one... this is the atom bomb for Pharisees.  You gotta love Paul, he's my hero;

Romans 2:1
1 Wherefore, defenseless are you, O man! everyone who is judging, for in what you are judging another, you are condemning yourself, for you who are judging are committing the same things. (CLNT)

The whole of Romans 2 completely blasts pharisees apart, honestly.  Hell, all of Romans completely blasts pharisees apart.  It's a love letter to the gentiles regarding the extreme grace of God.  And until we choose to live in that grace, rather than the laws the pharisees shame and guilt us with; we will never be free and we will NEVER truly understand how wide, and deep, and broad the love of God is.

Peace be with you,

Travis Penner

PS. I really DO suggest you go see strippers instead of going to church.  It's much better to admire God's beautiful creation than it is to watch a bunch of self righteous men congratulate themselves on their own hypocrisy.  They even have good food!

PPS. I've had to edit this as I'm not sure why some of the verses got whited out.  I've corrected this.  It's not great but it works for the time being til I get a better grasp of this blog editor.

Come, Let's Skip Church and Go Watch Some Strippers

  Good god, this has been quite a week.  4 days straight of migraines.  They call them migraines but they feel like little serpents coiling around the corner of my brain, slithering from one side to the next at whim sinking their fangs in the areas located behind my eyes.  Pleasant sensation.

  So when I informed my boss this morning that I had been fighting this for 4 days and using drugs (perscription ones mind you) to be able to stay at work and moderately function enough to get drawings finished... She came over to my cubicle and said, "Go home." to which I responded, "Let me finish this project." "It's not a rush, go home." "Well, then I can finish those other PDFs before I go." "If we need them, we'll get them done later today some other way, or you can do them tomorrow.  Go home."

  Well... I had done my best to perform my job, yet three times my boss "rebuked" me.  Thus scolded, I went home and promptly lay down.

  I swear, an hour later and the migraine doubled in force.  Sleep was theoretically supposed to have helped me but someone forgot to pass the message along to my friends the slithering serpents.

  At any rate, I have more time to write today.  So perhaps you will benefit from this.

  The Saga of the Shirt

  Back in 2008, not long before I completely abandoned "Church" my wife and I went to Las Vegas with some friends.  During our vacation there, I happen to spot this wonderful shirt.  It said "Support The Performing Arts" and had the sillhouette of an erotic dancer on it. Of course this completely tickled my anti-religious funnybone and I bought it.

  Not a week after we returned from Las Vegas we had our Bradford family reunion.  The Bradford side of our family is extremely religious.  Good ol' Bible pounding, firey preaching religious.  We came from a long line of religious folk, especially one dude who was on the Mayflower when America was being settled.  Religious tradition was our mainstay.

  Well... not mine.

  I decided I would wear the shirt.  I'm not sure what motivated me.  Maybe I was drawing a line in the sand, maybe I wanted to see how they reacted.  Maybe I just had a dark sense of humor.  I'm not sure.

  They did react.  One of my Uncles just shook his head, another completely cut me off.  This guy wouldn't look me in the eye the rest of our trip there.  The same guy who was always willing to give me a hug, and a warm word, rejected me because of a T-Shirt.  My sister wasn't much better, she rebuked me for wearing the T-Shirt.  My mother just patiently shook her head and sighed.

  My dad was the coolest of the lot, he and I have always had a similar sense of humor.  He just laughed.

  Anyways.  My work was done.  Later on it dawned on me what I had done.  I had played "Spot the Pharisee".  It seems to me, and this is just a theory, that sex is to Pharisees that Holy Water is to Vampires.  More on that later.

The Saga of the Young Pharisee

  Going further back in time.  In 1992 my family and I were involved in a homeschool curriculum out of ATIA. (Google it, if you're curious) Now to paint the picture properly, you have to understand that ATIA is very much like a decentralized Amish, or Hutterite... "community" and I use the word losely.  The curriculum is centered around extremely fundamentalist theology and doctrine.

   In 1992 they ran a program for youth to be trained in Indianapolis.  How they got that leaders of that city to involve their brand of crazy in their probation officer set up I have no idea.  That's what we did though.  For an entire week, at the age of 16, I was trained in their "technique" of dealing with young offenders.  After which we would go to the homes of these teenagers who's lives had gone off the rails and somehow rehabilitate them with this rather bizarre program.

   I won't go too much into detail about the program but I will say it was full of Old Testament theology, spiritual warfare, and no small amount of brainwashing.

  As a 16 year old however, I was extremely impressionable.  Being surrounded with so many other youths my age there was a sense of "belonging" a synergy that just... bonded us all together.  I had never before felt such an overwhelming sense of community.  I loved it.

  Toward the end of the seminar, many of us would go up front and give teary confessions of all sorts.  Well, not to be outdone I had to come up with the most deepest darkest confession I could come up with.

  Bravely, I went before this crowd of about 2,000 teens and confessed my love for porn.  Oh yes, how sorry I was that I had given satan a stronghold in my heart.  Alas, how porn has ruled me.  I had now brought my sin into the light and I would be forever victorious over it.  Rah rah.

  I came home not too long after and started preaching in my Church and a few other places.  For a year, everywhere I went in public I wore a suit and was extremely proud of myself.  Ah, yes, I was so pure.  I was so biblically correct.  I knew how to tear down strongholds and build myself towers of righteousness.  Aren't I special.

  I don't recall what brought me to my senses.  Maybe it was porn.

  I think most of all, God let me eat so much of my pride cake I became sick of it.  I literally could not stomach my self-righteous love of self any longer.  I stopped preaching, I knew it was all for love of self.  I stopped wearing suits, I knew I looked like a dumbass.

Pharisees = Spiritual Vampires

  I'm quite certain the whole reason I wore that shirt was because I hate religious pride.  I have this overweening desire to offend religious pride.  Religious pride is so beyond ridiculous.  What do we have to be proud about? 

1 Corinthians 4:7

For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not? (NIV)

  Everything we receive is a gift from God, our faith, our food, our clothes... everything.  Especially our sexual drive.

  I would rather go to a strip bar than go to Church.  I really would.  The people in the strip bars are far more honest about who they are and what they're about than any pharisee is.  In fact, Jesus spent his time around the degenerates of the world when he was here.

Luke 7:34

³⁴ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’

   The prostitutes themselves were more open to Jesus' message than the pharisees were. Matt 21:32

  There is much much more I can say on this.  Yet, for brevity's sake I will cut to the heart of the matter.

  I believe God is much less concerned with sexual sin than he is with the sin of religious pride.  Such pride is rampant in Christianity today.  Which do you think Jesus hated most?  Religion? Or Sex?

Contrast John 8:1-11 against John 2:13-17 and tell me which one pissed him off most?

Travis Penner

Come, Take the First Step

  Well, the doctor's visit wasn't all bad.  I've got to get my cholesterol down, but it's less than it was last year.  My sugars are lower now.  Thanks to no longer drinking pop, and reducing rice and bread intake.  I've just got to exercise more and perhaps I should get back on my primal diet again.

   Sigh... it's SO hard to get back on that, particularly with our North American Standard diet which is prevalent EVERYWHERE in this country.

   So yesterday I was talking about how I left Church.  I think I'll continue on and share a bit about the path I took after I left the ICOC.  Before I get into that, I really wanted to share something I have been constantly thinking about from the time my daughter was born.

  Once Cassidy came into my life, I couldn't believe how much a human being could love someone else.  Even more so that she is adopted.  She is not my flesh and blood, but she is completely my daughter.  The similarity in this to the relationship we have with God was not lost on me.

  We are adopted into the household of God, Romans 11 goes into this.  We are not Israelites, we are from the nations and yet God graciously brings us into his family.  It amazes me every day, how beautifully this is illustrated in my family.

   Cassidy is not flesh and blood, but we do not seperate her from my family in this.  My parents and in-laws lavish her as richly as any other family member.  My in-laws even more so, as she may be their only grand daughter.  Being my daughter, I still discipline her the same as I would any child of mine.  I love her unconditionally, no matter how stinky, rebellious, sick or undesirable should could possibly be.  There is nothing that would stop me from loving her.  EVEN when she dishonors me in her ignorance as a child.

  If me, a mere human being could love my child this way, how much more could God love us?  Even before I came to my understanding of Grace, I intuitively understood this.  Thus began my rejection of the traditional view of an angry, vengeful god.  The kind of god Mark Driscoll and other sadistic religious teachers paint.  Our God IS love.

  After all Matthew 7:9 paints the illustration of a Father who loves to extremes.  He DOES care, despite what religion would have you think.

   COME, TAKE THE FIRST STEP

Now that I've gotten my thought of the day out, let me share the first thing that began me on this journey.

  Sometime not long after I left the ICOC in 2004 I began to see the influence of the Catholic church still remained in Christian religion.  While we may have called ourselves "protestant" in influence we were still very much "New wine in old wine skins" (Mark 2:22) 

  We still had the hierarchy  though not as heavily so.  We still had traditional trappings such as: communion, days of worship, creeds, confession, sermons, even hymns and songs had become traditional.

  Mark 7:6-13 warns against a gospel that is based on such things.  It always amused me that the ICOC preached this but yet, DID the same things they preached against.  Religion is so blinded to their own hypocrisy.

   This forced me to sit back.  Once I left the Church I had to re-examine every tradition and dispose of it.  Every single tradition I have been taught is a complete lie.  Trinity? lie.  Hell? lie.  Communion? lie. etc. etc.

  Only once we clear away the cobwebs of traditions from our theology can we be ready to understand the truth.

   There's an interesting parable someone shared, I think it was on Facebook or somewhere.  A teacher in a school had a transparent glass on table filled with unclean brackish water.  He poured a jug of clean water into the glass, and it simply overflowed but remained murky and unclean.  "Can I clean the water in this glass by pouring more clean water into it?"

  The class murmured no and people shook their heads.  He dumped the glass of water into the sink and again filled it with clean water this time, now the glass was transparent and pure.

  "To begin to learn correctly, we must first clear our misconceptions.  Only once those are cleared, can we begin to learn."

  Our relationship with God is no different.

Travis Penner

Come Awake

Ok, since I have a lunch break for 30 mins today I figured I might continue on with my thoughts here.

I have a doctor's appointment this afternoon or I had have a full one hour lunch break, and I'd just go home and nap.  So - you my lucky reader, are the beneficiary of my lunch half hour today.  Cross your fingers that I shan't be getting bad news today.  She wants to talk to me about my lab results. :P

   So... Now you know I don't go to Church anymore.  I stopped taking the drug and now I'm a "Sense offender".  The biggest question everyone asks me all the time is, "What about the body of Christ?  Where are you going to get your fellowship?  What about taking your daughter to Sunday school."

I get plenty of fellowship.  If I wanted more fellowship I'd join a bowling league, or a chess club.  Maybe a writer's guild.  Yeah, if I only had time.  Honestly, who wants to waste an hour at a snoozefest when I can just nap in my own bed on Sunday morning?

And let's be even more blunt; why would I attend a place of worship that isn't even worshiping what I believe?

Here are fundamental things that almost every church teaches that I don't believe.

1. The Immortality of the soul.
2. Eternal torment/Hell
3. The Trinity
4. The death of Christ (that he did not DIE)
5. The salvation of all (that all have been saved by Jesus regardless of anything they believe or do)
6. The doctrine of free will

Those are majorly key things that I just cannot pass on.  Not only that but the Church is a man made institution.  I just cannot tolerate ever being a part of such a thing again.

If I'm a part of the body of Christ, then how do I attend myself? LOL  In that respect, "Going to Church" makes as much sense as telling my finger to "Go to Travis on Sunday"

And last of those... Why would I send my daughter to an institution that's going to confuse her with ridiculous junk?

A few weeks ago I posted a post responding to people who thought I was reacting out of bitterness or anger towards the ICOC because of my treatment there... this is what I said;

"I was thinking tonight and I realized I need to clear some misconceptions about me... When I refer to religion or faith based things many of you seem to be thinking that this is coming from a place of bitterness and anger within me from the abuse of my former cults.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Let me clarify. I left the cult in 2004. Not because I felt abused or angry. I left out of a sense of deep disappointment, recognizing the shallowness of that church was no different from the ones I'd attended before.

Yes I came to a period where I deeply grieved my past and regretted it. Now I do so no longer, but even during that period I attended a few other churches. Again, I left all of them because I was deeply disillusioned by their shallowness. Indeed there was little difference between these churches and the cult. They all subjected themselves to the doctrinal and moral authority of other men. They sought to PLEASE other people and not god. Their relationships were deeply shallow, their theology was beyond immature. Their faith was non-existent. They labored under guilt, shame and fear no less than I did in the cult.

I left Church permanently sometime in 2008. I did not believe I could find god in a church any longer. Believing that I could find him in a relationship FAR distant from tradition as possible.

As I said to someone else, I set FIRE to all my doctrine and theology, what remained would be only what was true. Sadly to say, nearly all of it was a complete lie in the light of the Bible.

So... Now.. Where do these opinions and thoughts come from? Yes, they're angry, but not at the people. I'm angry at a monolithic institution that would enslave people in a lie. I'm angry that people have a perverted idea of who my God is. I'm angry that people continue to live in fear, shame and guilt when grace is being preached.

This post isn't to argue anything or set up a debate with people. I'm simply clarifying where my heart is... so next time you say "Oh he's angry because a cult wounded him." No - I'm angry because I hate seeing people in bondage and sadly - I have to wait another eon or two before finally everyone is free... and freedom could be had today."

And now I've said enough for today ;)

Travis Penner

Come Alive

  It's been a long long time since I've posted in my blog.  As you can see, someone's taken up alot of my focus in the last 2 years.

  Being a father has been one of the primary joys of my life in the last 2 years, raising Cassidy is such a joy.  There are days when she exhausts all patience, but even in spite of those trying moments - as I'm putting her down at night and cuddling her for a little bit, it is difficult to think of anything I would rather be doing.

  Last night I was playing Final Fantasy XI, which I usually do after Cassidy goes down and someone said, "Having a kid sucks eh?" We were talking about how little time I have for gaming anymore.  I enjoy my 1 hour a night on FFXI.  So I responded, "I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing.  I would rather spend my time raising someone I hope to have as one of my closest friends, as opposed to spending it all on a game which will one day go in a garbage pile anyways."

  It's true.  Our greatest investments in this life is not in our hobbies, or our toys and personal pleasures.  The greatest investments we can ever make is in the lives of others.  I'm just so lucky to invest in this beautiful child who is growing up so quickly before our eyes.

   That is not to say I do not delight in my wife.  In the last few years, our friendship has grown deeper and more real as time goes by.  I'm deeply grateful, that in spite of the hell I went through in the Church, God brought great, massive blessings upon my life through it.  Jana is definitely one of them.

  This is also is another great change I have been experiencing.  As many of you know I left Church completely in 2008.  I've been to baptist churches, I've been in a cult, I have been to charismatic churches, and I have been to non-denominational churches.  By the time I left, I was completely disillusioned.  There is very little difference, no matter what Church you go to, to the fundamental things that make up a Church.  I could spend pages detailing the things that bothered me, but I won't.  At least not today.  Let's just say I was fed up with the traditions of men and longed to know God.

  I don't know how many of you have ever seen Equilibrium.  There's a point in this movie, where the main character stops taking a particular drug that is nationally enforced.  The purpose of the drug was to deaden the senses.  To remove all passion and emotion from the human person so that they would no longer have war in their society.

  Unfortunately as good as those intentions were, it removed all purpose for life as well.

  Our hero in this movie missed his dose... and then chose to keep missing his dose.  What happened as the drug finally left his system is moving and enlightening at the same time.  Suddenly even a sunrise had meaning, a painting could be fathomed, music could  move, life could be embraced.

  I have found the same thing since leaving Church.  No longer surrounded by doctrine and tradition, and reaching out desperately to find God, he took hold of my hand.  Slowly, little by little, I've been drawn into his truth.  I could not take hell seriously any longer.  Not knowing the God I know to be who he is.  It made no sense.  I once felt tormented by fear of condemnation and never knowing where I stood after I died.  The fear literally filled me with great dread.  I called out often "God, how can I be sure that you will not damn me?"

  This is the poison of religion.  And like the drug of Equilibrium, it takes time to leave the body until the sunrise of grace embraces you.  Trust me friends, Grace is not just a religious word.  Once you apprehend it, it sweeps you away to the depths of your being and is deeper than you can ever know.

   That's what has been happening to me lately as I'm discovering God all over again and falling madly in love with him.  I know that sounds crazy, but it's SO true.

That's my coffee break for today.  More to come.

Travis Penner