Quit looking over your shoulder. It's okay now.

One of the newer dynamics for me in rebuilding is really having faith.  

It's not that I didn't believe some important things before, but think maybe I was not leaning into them, willing to receive the results of that "leaning into", good or bad.

An example of this is trusting that I am secure with God. 

From my tribal background, the primary message I always received was, "There is a 100% chance you can mess up your relationship with God."

And that was it.  Sure, there's good news of God's love and grace, but almost always, there was someone standing there ready to say, "Well, you know, you can't trust that too much."

I'm pretty sure it was because people felt like you need to keep "some people" on a short lease with constant fear, or they'd "run off" and not live right, go to church, etc.  They'd "abuse grace".

I don't believe that anymore.  If God says I'm good with him and that nothing can separate me from his love, I'm just gonna believe that and no longer allow those who say otherwise to influence my thinking.

And this is something that runs deep.  I think it has to do with having an "invitation song" at the end of every gathering - you know, an emotional song that you're supposed to spend time examining yourself to see if there's something wrong with you so you can "go forward" and confess it and get prayed up.

Happens all the time in a lot of tribal gatherings.

In recent months, in my occasional leisure reading, I was reading about how in most Communist movements, there is an important place for "self-criticism sessions" where you think through what you personally are doing for or against "the cause" and tell someone for accountability.  

Sounded very familiar.

Somehow, my tribe and most others have tied "where we stand with God" to how the other people in the group think about me or what they say God thinks about me.  And from scripture, that's just not there.

Paul and other New Testament writers certainly spoke of the great importance of being a new people or of the new way of living a person can have who trusts God, but it was to be a reflection of what God's done for you and others, not a condition for salvation.

We are to live with others the way God has treated you/us through Jesus!  It's not "live with others in a good way SO THAT God will accept you."  

That's not just putting the cart before the horse, that's killing the horse and cooking it on the fire you made from burning the cart.

So what does it mean to just trust God has forgiven all sin, past, present, and future?  What does it mean to trust that "I'm saved" because his Spirit lives in me and isn't going to leave?

It means I can relax.  And so can you.  

And all the people who want to say/reply, "Yeah, but..." are completely understood and empathized with, but not allowed to have any more voice in the discussion.  

For me, they are misled at best or, at worst, a part of the system of religious bondage that is unhealthy and wrong - the stuff that Paul talks about in Galatians and Colossians.  May the Lord bless them.