Enough Christianity Posts

Hello! I think I've posted enough about Christianity for now. I've spent a good three months immersed in Christianity, daily. Although it's a great system of belief, or faith, if you choose to label it that, and it's been a great learning experience for me, yet it's not right for me. I'm not going to go into a long dissertation in regards to WHY it's not for me; it just isn't. (At this time. Perhaps in the future. Who knows?) I've learned a great deal, and that's really what I set out to do. Learn about Christianity, and that's what I did.

Warrior of Lite - JoJo The Mystical Monk - Zamurito - Self-Healed Madman - Warrior of Dreams

Resurrection People Part 7

After enough disappointment, hope starts to feel foolish.

I've been there. There was a season in my life that came after I left a job I had poured myself into. What I discovered afterward was that many of the decisions I had made, the way I had treated people, the direction I had led — all of it had been built on lies. My boss had been systematically lying to me, and I hadn't known it!

When I found out, everything I had trusted caved in at once. I was angry in a way that surprised me. I made it my personal mission to undermine everything that person tried to do. Whatever they wanted to succeed, I worked to make them fail.

One day, my closest friend sat across from me at our weekly coffee and told me the truth. He said, "Scott, you're so angry and bitter that you've become toxic. You can't see it, but it's affecting everyone around you. You're mad at one person, but you're taking it out on people who don't even know him." Then he said, "I'll be honest; it's really hard to be your friend right now."

That's what unprocessed hurt does. It doesn't stay where you put it. It leaks into everything, and you don't notice until someone who loves you is willing to say the hard thing.

I say all of this because I want to be honest about what resurrection hope is not.

Resurrection hope is not the decision to pretend that hard things aren't hard. It is not the spiritual discipline of faking cheerfulness when everything is falling apart. That's not hope, nor honesty. That's performance, and we talked yesterday about the cost of performance.

Jesus, on the night he was arrested, told his disciples: "In this world you will have trouble." (John 16:33 NIV) He didn't say you might. He said you will. He was not offering comfort by minimizing reality. He was offering something better.

He finished the sentence: "But take heart! I have overcome the world." (John 16:33 NIV)

Resurrection hope doesn't deny that the world is broken. It refuses to believe that brokenness is final. Naïveté pretends the hard thing isn't hard. Hope looks the hard thing directly in the face and says, "This is not the end of the story."

Some of us have gone quiet in our faith because the gap between what we hoped for and what actually happened is too painful to keep revisiting. That's not a faith problem, though. That's a human problem. And it's exactly where resurrection was always meant to do its work.

Paul writes in Romans 5 that "suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." (5:3-4 NIV) The hope at the end of that chain is not wishful thinking. It's the hard-won conviction of someone who has watched God show up in places that looked finished.

The next section of this plan will ask you to act on that hope. Before we get there, sit with this question today: where has disappointment quietly turned into a decision that nothing will change? That's the place where resurrection starts.

Identity Statement:

“Because Jesus has overcome the world, I am not defined by my hardest season. I am anchored in a hope that defies reality.”

Reflect:

Where has disappointment hardened into a settled expectation that nothing will change? What would it look like to bring that specific place to Jesus today?

Prayer:

Jesus, I don't want to perform hope I don't feel. So I'm bringing You the real version — the places where I stopped expecting anything. Meet me there. Amen.

All of the above copied from: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/68058/day/7?segment=0

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM

Loving Those Closest To Us

I think most of us have had some family conflicts and this is a great post in regards to that. Please feel free to visit Bible.com and click on this 'plan.' It's a good one! 

LET GOD SHAPE YOUR RESPONSES, NOT YOUR REACTIONS

Family conflict often reveals what is truly governing our hearts. When words become sharp, attitudes grow defensive, or silence is used as a weapon, it is usually a sign that emotions have taken the lead rather than God.

When tension rises in your family, how does your response reflect your emotions or your walk with God? Scripture warns us to guard our inner life carefully: Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. (Proverbs 4:23). A guarded heart is not closed off from others. Rather, it is surrendered to God, allowing Him through the Holy Spirit to shape our responses.

Jesus modelled this dependence on the Father. Luke 5:16 tells us that He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. Jesus did not respond to pressure, misunderstanding, or opposition without first anchoring Himself in communion with God. If the Son of God needed regular withdrawal to remain aligned with the Father, how much more do we need time with God to respond wisely in difficult family situations?

Romans 12:18 challenges us with these words: If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Notice that peace is connected to personal responsibility. When we are at peace in our hearts and at rest in the Lord, it becomes easier to handle conflict. When our walk with Him is strong, we gain the self-control to pause, listen, and respond with grace.

God often uses family tension as a training ground for spiritual maturity. These moments reveal whether we are being led by the Holy Spirit or driven by emotion. Instead of asking God to change others first, He invites us to allow Him to change our inner responses. As we surrender our emotions to Him, He produces wisdom, restraint, and peace within us.

Pause and reflect

What recent family reaction revealed an area where you need God's guidance more deeply?

Practical application

Before responding in a tense family moment, pause and pray silently, inviting God to govern your words and tone.

Prayer

Lord, rule my heart by Your Spirit. Silence emotional reactions and shape my responses according to Your wisdom. Teach me to reflect my relationship with You in every family interaction. I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM

Peace

Jesus spoke about peace to people who did not have peaceful lives.

They lived with fear, loss, occupation, and uncertainty woven into everyday life. So when Jesus talked about peace, He wasn’t offering comfort or escape. He was offering a way to remain faithful when nothing around them felt stable.

Jesus lived in that same reality. He knew violence, injustice, and division firsthand. Yet He consistently spoke about peace, not as denial of suffering, but as a way of living rooted in trust. “My peace I give you,” He said. “Not as the world gives” (John 14:27). The peace Jesus offered was different. It did not depend on circumstances improving or conflicts disappearing.

We often think peace comes after problems are solved. After things calm down. After life feels manageable again. But Jesus presents peace as something that sustains us while problems remain. His peace does not pretend everything is fine. It anchors us when everything feels uncertain.

Many of us struggle with peace because we live surrounded by noise. Fear-driven headlines. Endless opinions. Pressure to react quickly and choose sides. In that environment, peace can feel passive or even irresponsible. Anger feels more powerful. Outrage feels more justified.

But the peace of Jesus is not passive. It is active and costly. It requires restraint when anger feels earned. Humility when pride wants control. Trust when fear demands certainty. Choosing peace often means resisting the urge to mirror the hostility around us.

Jesus calls His followers to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers. Peacemaking does not avoid tension. It steps into it with wisdom and courage. It refuses to dehumanize others, even when disagreement is deep. It chooses love over retaliation and presence over withdrawal.

Sometimes peace looks like reconciliation. Other times it looks like holding your ground without hatred. Listening longer than feels comfortable. Refusing to let fear shape who you become.

In the way of Jesus, peace is not weakness. It is strength rooted in confidence that God is at work, even when the world feels broken. When we choose peace, we bear witness to a different Kingdom—one not built on fear, but on faith, hope, and love.

Copied from: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/67336/day/5?segment=0

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM

Resurrection People - Part 3

When I was in seminary, I hit a wall.

I was trying to crank through nearly thirty credits in nine months while also learning how to be married. Things at home were good. But spiritually, I was in a dark place.

I had stopped having a personal relationship with Jesus and started having a professional one. I read the Bible for my classes and my sermons, not for myself. I prayed because that's what pastors are supposed to do. I was burning out, going through the motions, and privately wondering if any of it was real.

One day, in a class designed to be a safe space for honesty, I decided to tell the truth. I described the burnout, the emptiness, and the fact that I was writing sermons for other people while feeling nothing myself.

I looked around the room as I talked. Every face looked like a computer that froze. My professor said, "Scott, this doesn't make sense." The rest of the conversation made it clear that this was not, in fact, a safe space for that kind of honesty.

That was the last day I was vulnerable in seminary. Not the last day I told the truth in general, just the last day I let those people in. I learned that day that what the people in that classroom wanted from me was the performance of faith, not real-life reality.

Act 5 tells a story that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and honestly, it should! The short version is that a couple named Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of land, kept a portion for themselves, and told the church they had given everything. Peter confronted them. Both of them died.

This is not a story about money. It's a story about hypocrisy: the decision to present a version of yourself that isn't true to receive credit you haven't earned. As one pastor wrote, “they wanted the credit and prestige of sacrificial generosity without the inconvenience.”

In Matthew 23, Jesus called people like this “whitewashed tombs.” They were beautiful on the outside, full of death on the inside. The gap between who we present ourselves to be and who we actually are is something Jesus takes seriously.

After all, hypocrisy destroys community. A community where people perform rather than live, where image matters more than integrity, cannot sustain the kind of trust that resurrection requires. God can't heal our masks. He can only work with what's real.

One reason I share honestly on stages and pages (including stories that don't make me look good) is what I expected that day in seminary. I learned what happens when people sense they're not safe to be real. They go quiet. And the quiet isolation is worse than the mess.

Identity Statement:

“Because Jesus is alive, I don't have to protect an image. I am free to live with authenticity and integrity.”

Reflect:

Where are you managing perception instead of living honestly? Is there a gap between who you are in public and who you are in private? What would it cost to close it?

Prayer:

Jesus, free me from the exhausting work of protecting an image. You already know the real version of me, and You came for that person. Help me live like that's true. Amen.

All the above copied from: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/68058/day/6?segment=0

JoJo The Mystical Monk - JJtMM