Wade Poe

A common thing I hear from some people is "Aren't you afraid that...?" followed by a host of different possible fears that the questioner has. Aren't you afraid some people will hear what you're saying and take it the wrong way?  Aren't you afraid some people will quit going to church and will not want to worship God? Aren't you afraid some people will not want to have anything to do with you anymore? Aren't you afraid some people will think it's not important to give to church or to serve others? Aren't you afraid some people will not be able to "keep up" with God if they don't go to church? Aren't you afraid some people will abuse grace if they think God doesn't hold sin against them now? Aren't you afraid some people will __________? _____________ You get the idea.  The most common denominator of all those conversations has been "fear" and "people".   In other words, why aren't you afraid li...

Some days I need to remember  where all this  (deconstruction and rebuilding business stuff) started, at a much deeper level --- some years  back.  And it is still THE driving force that changed everything for me. I grew up learning  that Jesus brought a new and improved version of what they did in the Old Testament. Now instead of sacrificing  animals for sin, all you needed to do was to apologize and ask for a little more forgiveness. And in my particular tribe, you needed to make sure you "did church" the right way because that was also a sin - if you did things "in church" the "wrong way". You 100% could not know on this side of eternity whether or not you actually had any hope of being saved after this life.   You hoped it all turned out okay.  But week after week, the people "at church" would make sure you knew it was NOT a done deal and that you were probably going to be in serious doubt all the way through life. People would say things li...

I don't think I remember Jesus being anxious about anything.  Sure, he could get emotional and passionate and act on things, but he wasn't a worrier. He just knew what he was going to do and did it. Somehow, that didn't convey early on. I'm not sure why we learned some of those Jesus stories the way we did.  It was always more dramatic in presentation than what the scripture actually said. Like when he and his guys were crossing the sea and a storm came up. They were terrified and he was taking a nap. When they hollered out in fear and essentially accused him of not caring, he sat up and told the storm to stop and told them to chill out. Anytime I saw artwork or even heard stories being told about this, Jesus was always portrayed as standing up dramatically, appearing in some kind of brighter light/a spotlight, and making some kind of grand, physical gesture like you'd see in a movie - but that's not at all in scripture. In our attempts to make things real and i...

I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it.   I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.   I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.   I can do all this through him who gives me strength. _______________ "I have learned..." Those two lines from Paul in Philippians 4 were life changing for me when I first "got it" a few decades ago and they're still paying off with newer understanding  and deeper insight as the years go by. There  were a lot of supernatural or magical assumptions I'd picked up along the way about God, life, church, and how of it works  together. In spite of actually  seeing what Paul and others would s...

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,   gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Paul's words in Galatians 2 remind me that all those qualities or fruit are just that - fruit. When I am allowing the Spirit to lead, mentor, guide, etc - things will result. I learned  earlier in life I needed to  act that way to show that God's Spirit was at work in me, but that's not quite what Paul was saying. Fruit is something that grows naturally. When I was trying to "act that way", in a lot of ways, it would be like me trying to staple fruit to a tree. It just doesn't work that way. ____________ I really like when someone is a good actor in a movie or TV show. You know someone is a really good actor when you despise them because they play their role so well. And it's just them playing a role! We can act like we have love, joy, peace and so on, but when the stage goes away, t...

Some who are just now coming to an awareness of some changes have asked, "What's going on with Central and you?"   I don't know what all to tell you if you've not been around recently.  [I will add this after the fact that you can go back and read over my blog posts for a lot more clarity. There's a lot more to it than I'm saying here, but this is the kind of language that seems to connect with some more easily than the deconstruction/rebuilding side of things.] I'm actually disconnected from that organization now.  It's been since the last day of January 2024 that I walked away from that collection of good people. Since then, I've been made aware of many things from God I didn't know were available or possible, so it's kind of hard to look back with any objective information to speak of. God is MUCH bigger than I've allowed him to be before.  I am grateful for what he used to move me to how I can see things today.  I know there is...

Some things that have sat on different back burners that I'm putting forward on a list so I can clean out those areas to make room for more: First up - God makes fewer promises than we like to attribute to him. The idea that God is our butler or personal shopper or some kind of divine Santa Claus is still out there in church culture.   It is as if, under that mistaken idea, that he's a guy who we have to be really nice to in the hopes that he'll fill our list of wants - debts paid, cash in hand, illnesses cured, relationships healed, consequences of old decisions removed, etc.   The thing is, God never promised any of that and doesn't.  That does not mean that he can't or won't - but that idea doesn't come from scripture anywhere under the New Testament.   Even the Old Testament didn't offer that idea - it said that if you were perfect in your keeping of the law, you'd be blessed with food, protection from enemies, and other basics - but certainly n...