This is another Master class session:

I have completed the freshman session – the call of a soldier of Christ; and the sophomore session – the 7 characteristics of a soldier of Christ.

For this next seesion that I am putting together for my book Giant Slayer – Chapter 4: The 5Cs of a Soldier of Christ,  I am now beginning to work on the next C – the Caution of a soldier of Christ which deals with warnings to be careful to not fall into apostasy.

Because this is a junior class, I will be required to dig deeper and get a little more personal. The study will be a little more intense now because by now, having experienced the freshman and sophomore sessions, I now know what is expected of me in reference to how to study.

And omg I have so much to think about.

For example, in dealing with the topic of Apostasy…

Could the Apostle Paul be considered an apostate?

By definition of the word I would say yes he can be considered an apostate based upon his actions and beliefs when he was known as Saul.

But that makes no sense to a part of my brain which says that he was zealous in his beliefs and that his actions prior to becoming the Apostle Paul was based on his incorrect knowledge.

So when he learned the truth, on the road to Damascus, his behavior changed in that he stopped persecuting Christians…

BUT, his love for GOD did not change. It grew because of the truth he learned from and about Jesus Christ.

To the Pharisees it felt like he was an apostate.

So this is where my struggle lies.
It’s not in what I know of the Apostle Paul but instead it’s in the fact that I realize that I don’t understand the question.

The question seems simple enough:
Was the Apostle Paul an apostate?

But
Because I can give a yes and a no answer to that question, this is how I know I don’t understand the question.

You see, back in 2003 the Holy Spirit taught me that if I can answer both yes and no to a question then it is a trick question meant to entrap me.

Therefore, I realize that I don’t understand the question, and in not understanding the question this simply means I don’t understand the meaning of the word apostate.

This is crazy because I know the definition of the word apostate and I understand it.

What is apostasy really?
At the moment I feel like it’s a deviation from God’s word. But again I am just beginning to put together this part of the class so I am looking forward to the amazing lesson that the Holy Spirit will be teaching me.

Have I seen it?
I would say that I have when I’ve seen someone whom I know was a pastor of the gospel of Christ and now they are promoting something that God’s word does not teach – that you have to be an Israelite or you won’t be saved. God’s word does not say that nowhere.

John 3:15 says, “for God so loved the world…that whosoever believe might not perish…”

So yes I have seen apostasy.

This is why I feel as if apostasy is a deviation away from God’s word.

This makes me also think of myself.

I will never forget the day I had this supernatural experience as I sat reading God’s word while those around me watched television. 

I experienced hearing the Bible speak to me.

I was reading in the book of Romans. I started reading it for the second time because I realized that having finished reading all 16 chapters that I didn’t know half of what I read. I had just read words.

Because I know I am book smart, and because I did not want to just read words for the sake of saying that I read this particular book of the Bible, I went back and reread the book of Romans slower.

I read over and over and over verses making sure I understood what I was reading.

I will never forget.

When I got to Romans 1:8-13 something happened not once but three times that forever changed me.

The Bible spoke to me

I literally no longer heard my own voice reading God’s Word in an undertone. I heard the Apostle Paul speaking.

I remember closing my Bible and looking around me to see if the others heard what I heard. Everyone else had their faces in the television watching the Matrix.

I opened my Bible a second time. Started from Romans 1:1 and read again. And again beginning at verse 8 I heard what I believed to be the voice of the Apostle Paul speaking to me.

I closed my Bible again looking around me to see no one bothered by my antics. They were all engrossed in what was on the TV screen.

So for the third time, again starting at Romans 1:1, I opened my Bible to slowly read it, and I heard the Apostle Paul speak to me

“First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. People all over the world are talking about your faith.I serve God with my whole heart. I preach the good news about his Son. God knows that I always remember youin my prayers. I pray that now at last it may be God’s plan to open the way for me to visit you.I long to see you. I want to make you strong by giving you a gift from the Holy Spirit.I want us to encourage one another in the faith we share.Brothers and sisters, I want you to know that I planned many times to visit you. But until now I have been kept from coming. My work has produced results among the other Gentiles. In the same way, I want to see results among you.” – Romans 1:8-13 NIRV

(I’m am almost positive that it was the NIRV that I was reading at the time. It was either that or the GNT.)

Either way, I know what I know which is that the Bible took me in. I was no longer reading about them back in history, but I was now reading a letter that was written to and for me.

I spent time with Abraham and each of the Apostles and the prophets and Moses. They spoke to me.

I remember mentioning this to my mom. I thought she was already experiencing this. I thought that this was why she pressed for me to read my Bible.

But instead my mom broke my heart calling me an apostate.

My mom told me that she would never send me another piece of religious material ever again .

My mother stopped speaking to me.

She told me this the day before my birthday.

I balled up in a fetal position and cried for about an hour then I picked up my Bible and opened it and the first thing I saw was Psalm 27:10.

I heard the Bible speak this to me and from that moment onward GOD has been Daddy for me.

I have dealt with various religious leaders turning their backs on me because they wanted me to follow them and they wanted to be God’s Voice spoken to me because of their titles and I rejected that.

Why would I allow someone to speak for Dad to me when from 2003 to present Daddy speaks to me Himself and not just through His written word.

Ive been called all types of names. But the only name that matters to me is that Dad calls me His.

As I reflect on my mom calling me an apostate (because like King Asa, I tore down her throne in my heart. Those high places and idols that were set up unknowingly in my heart had to come down. I chose Jesus Christ to be my Master, Lord and Savior thru whom I approached our Heavenly Father.  I understood that I was to have no other gods before my Father in Heaven. He is first and foremost in my life.

I lost family relations because of this.

In their minds I stopped acknowledging Jehovah

But what they don’t know is that HE is my Father whom I love dearly. I am devoted to honoring my Heavenly Father with my life.

Yet my mother and cousin died calling me an apostate. One of my son’s still view me to be an apostate and won’t speak to me. I have step family with the same feelings. Actually I don’t know what they feel because they won’t speak to me. I am dead to them because their religion tells them that I am to be such.

The last conversation I had with my step father was to say to him “you will never know what I believe if you don’t talk to me. You can only assume.”

I pray for them all. I love them all. I understand now why it was necessary for me to be separated from them. But it hurts to know that they think that I am an apostate simply because I don’t subscribe to letting a human tell me how to understand God’s Word when for years the Holy Spirit has been my tutor opening God’s Word up to me and teaching me.

Even during this pandemic that began in 2020, I didn’t miss a beat in getting filled from the table of the Most High.

I dont have to wait until Sunday to enjoy a meal from the table of the Most High.

So that press to get back to church was not a press that gripped me because I never left it.

I’ve had religious denominations try to press me to join in times pass using scriptures such as found in John chapter 15 to say across the pulpit that if I didn’t join their church and denomination that I was not connected to the true vine.

Trust me I went home afterwards and asked my Father in Heaven if this was so.

“How can I hear your voice so clearly and experience your word being made plain to me and yet not be connected to the vine because I’m not a member? Am I supposed to join?”

I will never forget in 2013 when Father spoke to me, “I did not bring you out of one organized religion only to place you in another one.”

It has been made clear to me that I was to go where Father led me. Deuteronomy 12:5-6.

It was during the pandemic of 2021 that Father impressed upon me to disconnect from the attachments I had made. Though there was a purpose for the connection, I was never supposed to form an attachment. I am supposed to go where Father tells me and speak what and where Father tells me. But when attachments are formed, along with that attachment comes the expectations for you to follow that lead.

Jesus Christ is my leader and I must do as HE says first and foremost over any other. I have begun to notice that about many religions and places of worship – there is a measure of control that arises. Yet because I’m called to go where Father sends me, I’ve experienced that some people feel some type of way about that.

Wow looking back I’ve experienced a lot since I’ve been walking with King Jesus. The only thing that has kept me has been God’s Word and my clinging to it as if my life depended upon it and in actuality my life does depend on it.

What has kept me safe these past 18 years (wow it’s been 18 years) was my clinging to God’s Word.

If I didn’t have the Holy Spirit speaking to me, leading me, teaching me I don’t know what I would do.

And just like that Paul speaks again
2 Timothy 3:10-17.

I am encouraged as I eat the words for this junior class session of the Master class and fill my stomach with it first before I speak it for class.

This part about apostasy wells up a lot of emotions in me which is good that it came up because for this class I first need to lay those emotions down before the Lord.

I recognize that this has to happen because I needed to acknowledge that I know the word apostasy and how it’s been used against me. But I also recognize that I didn’t understand it.

I say that because having considered my experience and comparing Paul’s experience I recognize that Paul became a better version of himself. You see, his zealousness was initially based upon a lack of understanding. But when Jesus stopped him, and Paul learned the truth – that Jesus Christ was\is the Son of God, then Paul became even more zealous based on that truth.

It’s no different from me. I always loved my Heavenly Father Jehovah. But once I had that experience where the Bible unlocked before me and in opening it drew me in, my love simply deepened beyond the traditions of going to a meeting to be taught from a platform.

I understand that everything has its purpose. So for some that is necessary. But for me, I became an insatiable worshipper. For me Sunday service isn’t enough. I need Monday thru Saturday too. For me 10a to 12noon corporate isnt enough. I need the early morning / late at night, one on one intimate sessions more.

That has nothing to do with where anyone else is at in their walk. But it has everything to do with where GOD is calling me to be according to His great pleasure for which He chose me. (Ephesians 1: 4-5)

This level of study promises to be more intense and personal. I don’t know that I’m ready for this but at the same token I didn’t come this far to stop now. This is actually where the lessons learned begins to get good because they become more applicable.

So to that I say…

Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ I surrender to you. You are the Great Potter and I am clay in your hands. You chose me for your purpose and the more you shaped me and formed me you gave to me choices to which I responded YES.

I still say YES Father. It’s uncomfortable, but you are molding and shaping me for your will and your purpose. Have your way.

I don’t want to withhold anything from you. Not even my pain. I give my pain to you too. It’s temporary when I let you have it. Thru the pain you are working things together for my good. Thru the pain you are making me new. My pain is yours. Take it. Take it all.

I know that I am safe in your arms Father, so it is in Jesus name that I surrender to you.

Amen.

The Apostle Paul was warning against the dangers of apostasy, and he used such a big word to do so. He used a word that carries such a heavy negative connotation that if you focused on what is implied by the word apostasy, you would miss the simplicity of what the Apostle Paul was warning against.

BACKSLIDING

You see, when we use the word apostate and apostasy, the mental picture that we get is of someone who is anti-Christ. That mental picture causes us to miss the mark of what is really happening.

The Pharisees no doubt considered Paul to be an apostate, but the truth of the matter is that the Apostle Paul walked more in his calling, love, and zeal for the Lord when he came to an accurate knowledge of the truth, of which Jesus Christ is, after his Damascus road experience than he did before Jesus called him. Paul’s behavior towards the Christians, prior to his conversion, was because of his love for GOD in the religious sense. He was transferred from religion and traditions to relationship. His eyes was opened to see what the eyes of the Pharisees, as religious leaders, could not see.

 I’ll never forget when Jesus wept over Jerusalem. He said that “of all people they should have known the day of their visitation, but they didn’t.” Their hearts and attitudes was wrong, and they had the nerve to call someone an apostate. What they didn’t understand is that the Israelites had apostatized a long time ago. The presence of the Lord had left them a long time ago. They were going thru the motions of worship with no power. So apostasy is more closely related to backsliding than it is to being anti-Christ.

The perils of apostasy, the dangers of it, is that it’s a slow fade. You can drift away, or be lulled away, to the point that one day you wake up and you are too far gone where no one can reach you but Jesus. So the Apostle Paul warns us of the dangers of drifting away, the dangers of backsliding, yes, we are warned of the dangers of apostasy; and then he tells us how to protect ourselves from those dangers. That protection starts with a regular study of God’s Word. Day and night, daily reading God’s word is the first step to being layered with protection against that which is designed to lure us away.

But one thing you will notice, as I did, is that when you do start reading God’s Word for real, for real, then things will begin to break off of you. In that breaking, as you begin to draw closer to God, in spirit and in truth (even closer than you thought you were), then idols that were in you, that you were unaware of, will begin to fall down; and those who sat on thrones in your heart, that you didn’t realize you placed on pedestals, will accuse you of apostasy because you have dethroned them and gave that place of worship to the rightful owner of our worship and praise – to King Jesus.

It is important that we understand what apostasy is especially because it is when we draw closer to God Almighty through Jesus Christ, in spirit and truth, with all our heart, mind, and soul, that we will begin to hear the word “apostasy” and/or “apostate” come out of the mouths of those who feel like we no longer follow, serve, and practice as they do. We need to understand what we are looking at. We might just find that we placed people on pedestals in our life unknowingly and the closer we drew to God those idols had to be removed.

This doesn’t mean that we stopped loving anyone. It simply means that we put people and things in its rightful place. We give Caesar’s things to Caesar, and God’s things to God. GOD Almighty alone is worthy of the glory honor and praise. To GOD Almighty alone belong the worship and praise.

Unequivocally.