Unka Glen

sonofiver asked: There are pastors and Christians who say there is only ONE way to date, making up rules and regulations, about time spent together, and physical intimacy, and what not. If you had 5 minutes with one of these people, what would you say to him/her?

Unka Glen answered: Oh, they’d basically agree with me. You have to remember, that many of these fad Christian dating books were actually written a few years ago, and the authors have had a chance to see the fruit of their work. And it’s not pretty.

They’ve had plenty of feedback from ministry professionals who do regular marriage counseling, and those professionals have explained how these books have made a mess of things, to put it mildly.

It’s created people who are scared to death, just to go out on a date. Far from helping people have healthy and Godly relationships, in large numbers, it’s driven them to simply have no relationships at all. Fewer and fewer married couples know anything about how to be an actual couple. 

Trust me when I tell you that the authors of these books have heard this feedback in numbers far too big for them to ignore. They agree with the results, simply because they can’t be denied any longer. So why isn’t the larger Christian culture aware of all this?

That’s where things get complicated.

Many of these authors have tried to, well, kinda sorta distance themselves from their own books. Others have suggested that their work was taken out of context (it wasn’t), and made into something ugly and legalistic (it was already legalistic), and that people have made a mess of it (it was already a mess).

To you, these might sound like lame excuses, and that’s in fact what they are. The real answer to your question is: money. You see, when an author writes a book and makes a deal with the publisher, the publisher OWNS that book. 

An author can publicly denounce their book, but if they do something to prevent a publisher from making money on the book that was sold to them, then that publisher can sue that author. 

That might still sound like a lame excuse for a generation of people who are not only stuck with all this toxic nonsense in their heads, but that these books are still available, and are still making money, and they’re making money off of the very people they’re messing up. It is lame, and it is wrong.

I know divorced people who would still be married today, if they’d never read any of these books. And it breaks my heart to see them suffer.

But in a way, what you and I are doing here is the solution to that whole mess. I’m not getting paid to tell you what I’m telling you, nobody owns or controls this conversation. You and I are free to compare notes, to share what we’re seeing out there, and to make sense of it all together. 

This technology is allowing YOU to help shape the church of the future. And I think the future is in good hands.

a-dash-of-ravishing asked: Hey Unka! I was wondering about paranormal events, I know that 99.99% of that stuff is a hoax, but there are some things I’ve even experienced MYSELF, and cases that are just too real. Are they demons? Is it Satan’s plot to lead us astray from Christ and into things like the occult? Thanks for your time! :)

Unka Glen answered: You’re certainly right that most of that “paranormal” stuff is a hoax. And of course both demons and angels are real. The Bible talks about both, so there you have it. But here’s where most people get it turned around: 2 Corinthians 11:14 says “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.”

You see, the devil doesn’t care about you believing in him, there’s not really much to believe in there anyway, and he knows that. It’s really about you believing in his counterfeit version of God. 

Satan says: God cares about you, so He wants you to be rich!

God says: I will supply all your needs according to MY RICHES, so you can focus on giving to the poor.

Satan says: God wants you to be successful! It’s the key to happiness!

God says: Take infinite, perfect peace. Take endless joy. Follow me, and your heart will be so full, it will overflow to those around you. 

Satan says: We’re all afraid of so many things in this world, so BE CAREFUL, and try to keep God happy!

God says: Have no fear. I am your hiding place. I will protect you from trouble, and I will surround you with songs of deliverance. 

…Anyway, you see the point, the enemy isn’t really looking for you to believe in all that occult stuff. The deeper one goes into reading around and investigating things, the more likely one is to eventually hear the actual Gospel.

The enemy knows that someone with an eyes-open interest in the occult may be closer to finding the truth than a person who has fallen for a fake and messed up version of Christianity that denies people a connection with God from the start.

Satan says: Read your bible, go to church, and pray, then God will be pleased with you.

God says: Just hang with me for awhile. Right now I don’t care what you’ve done. Just let me hold you awhile.

Anonymous asked: Can I ask about pornography? I feel like I’ve fallen so many times, how many times will God forgive me? Am I really sorry if I continue to do it? How many times can I spit in Gods face? [edited for length]

Unka Glen answered: Well, you actually have about a zillion things about you that need fixing or tweaking or adjusting, right? In fact, nobody ever dies a perfect human being. So it’s kind of an endless list of things to work on, and that’s true for all of us.

So right away we know one thing for sure: God is infinitely patient. We know that God will never be dealing with a perfect human being. From birth to death, He will be dealing with some kind of wrongness from each of us. If He couldn’t tolerate all that, none of us would be here. 

He tells us that love is patient, and kind, and that it keeps no record of wrongs, and then He said, “I am love”.

But WE keep a record of our wrongs, don’t we? Despite Isaiah 43:18 telling us, “forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.” We live in that past anyway. We make it about our performance when our performance didn’t get us saved and it certainly can’t keep us in good standing with God.

So if we let it drop when it comes to our past, we’re still in the present looking at a zillion sins, knowing that even in our future, this list of sins and imperfections will still exist. And there’s only one way to handle all this: one at a time. 

If I tell you to paint a house, you can’t paint all the rooms at once, right? you start in one place and you end in another. You plan it so that you literally don’t paint yourself into a corner. Same thing with your spiritual life, you’re meant to wisely start in one place, and end in another, dealing with one thing at a time. 

It’s SUPER IMPORTANT that you get this list of things you need to deal with in the right order. And in your case, this is your real problem: you’ve put porn at the top of your list. And so I must ask you, why? Is it of major theological importance? Does it effect your witness? Does it ruin your life in some tangible way? How did this get to the top of the list?

You and I know the answer is: the emotions of guilt put it there. Here’s what you need to know about that: guilt is a tool of the enemy, and it always entraps. In your case you’ve been convinced that looking at naked people is the exact same thing as “spitting in God’s face”. It’s obviously not. This is a lie. 

So we should have thought of GUILT as the thing to put at the top of this list! Our guilt tells us theological lies. It keeps us from sharing God with others in an effective way, because we either share our guilt-ridden lives (and who would want to sign up for that?), or more likely we don’t share Christ at all, because we feel unworthy. In the end guilt is ruining everything.

Why isn’t guilt at the top of your list? 

Not only isn’t guilt at the top of the list, it’s not even ON your list! Worse still, it’s actually the thing you’re using to decide what order the list goes in! Guilt was the setup. Guilt was the trap. Porn just happens to be the thing you were willing to feel guilty about. Once you’ve been convinced that you’ve “spit in God’s face”, then you can’t go to God and ask for help, right?

And the separation is complete. 

You think it’s the porn that did the damage. It was the guilt. And here’s the thing about that. Quit the porn, and the enemy with tempt you to feel guilty about something else. Now, by contrast, if you quit the guilt, then you have all that mental energy, and all that renewed connection with God, to fight the porn thing. 

You see, when you get that list right, each item you work on builds a momentum towards solving the next thing. 

suile-glasa asked: How do you deal with having doubts about God?

Unka Glen answered: Well, awhile back I had me some doubts. And I tried talking to my Christian friends about my doubts, but they were no help, because they were too busy repressing their own doubts to hear mine. Besides they were worried I’d talk us both into disbelief.

So I tried talking to my atheist friends, but I realized they were worried too, about losing their faith in nothing. Who knows, if they doubted all their non-belief, they’d end up, ya know, being a believer. So they weren’t any help. 

In the end, there was nobody to talk to except God, and that conversation went a lot like this:

Me: I have, like, doubts about all this stuff.

Him: I get that.

Me: You’re not mad?

Him: Nope. I like to do things on the down-low, so that way people come to me by choice. It’s better for the relationship that way. But it sometimes leads to moments of confusion.

Me: Yeah, I guess I kinda suck at the faith thing.

Him: Well, I can just give you the faith, that’s how it’s supposed to work anyway.

Me: Right on. I can dig that.

Him: I knew that you could.

Me: It’s just that sometimes things really look bad.

Him: There’s much more to life than what you can see.

Me: Yeah. That makes sense.

Him: But you can always come to me for answers, that’s how that’s supposed to work too.

Me: That sounds like a lot of me coming to you, and like, depending on you.

Him: Now we’re getting somewhere!

Me: Okaaay. You don’t mind me being kind of a hot mess about all this?

Him: I love talking to you about all this stuff, and there’s so much more for us to talk about as well. Don’t worry about your doubts, fears, or stumbles… just focus on keeping us connected. Everything you need will flow from that connection.

How much of your life is ruled by fear? How many decisions, how many of your actions, how much of your lifestyle is all about fear? That might be:

• The fear of rejection
• The fear of failure
• The fear of poverty
• The fear of loneliness
• The fear of being on bad terms with God

Now imagine that we thought of fear as a sin. Or perhaps that’s unfair, given that fear is an emotion, and I don’t think you can really have a righteous or sinful emotion. So let’s say that cowardice is when we let fear rule our lives. Cowardice is when fear is driving the bus and making the decisions.

By that definition, cowardice HAS to be a sin.

The Bible does say: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6). But we really don’t think of life that way, do we? It really helps to worry over things, if we didn’t worry, nothing would ever get done! Worry just shows that we care about things! Yet in Matthew 6:27 Jesus asks, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

You know how Christians have this huge fixation on porn? You know how they hate falling into it? How they’d hate for anyone to know that they’re committing that kind of sin? What if Christians had the same attitude about cowardice?

And why isn’t it obvious by now that the enemy uses fear to drive us deeper into participating in church, out of a fear of punishment, while simultaneously creating a more distant and cold relationship with God? And all this despite 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.”

Fear is a prison, and I want to set you free from it. God holds your future in His hand. IT’S NOT UP TO YOU. He has challenges for you to accept, hurdles for you to overcome, and tasks for you to complete, but HE will ensure the victory, not you. That’s good news. 

Joshua 1:9 ”Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Fear not
Because I have redeemed you
I have called you by your name
You are mine.
Isaiah 43:1b

more-than-a-piece asked: Hey Unka! Just wanted to ask you if you have any advice about how to start up ministering to high school girls, like maybe how to go about it? What exactly to talk about and how far to go with it? Would be immensely appreciated!! Again thank you! I truly love and learn from everything you post :D 

Unka Glen answered: When you’re starting a new ministry, you should do as little talking as possible, and as much listening as possible. All too often people think of ministry as one person saying smart things, and everyone else around being blown away. That’s not really how it works. 

So we start with the premise that the Holy Spirit is drawing everyone to Himself, and we all feel that pull, on one level or another, but we spend a lot of our lives stuck on one obstacle or another. So ministry is all about helping people to overcome those obstacles, so that the relationship can move forward. That’s simple.

The complicated part is the obstacles themselves. If they were easy to figure out and overcome, we’d be over them already. We’ve already figured out the Bible part of all these problems, (and so have they) because that part is utterly simple. For example, if a young lady says she’s struggling with anger towards a friend who has betrayed her trust, we all know that the biblical answer is forgiveness.

So, you think, I’ll just tell her to forgive the friend, because this is, after all, the correct answer. Her response will be to tell you, “I just can’t”. She’s stuck, you see. So you think, I need a gimmick that will kind of trick her into forgiving her friend. So you invent some brilliant “exercise” that will do the job. And then that will fail, and then you’ll realize, hey, we never really spent any time talking about the actual obstacle itself. 

We need to investigate what makes it hard to forgive someone. That means you don’t need to think of the most amazing lesson on forgiveness (she already knows she needs to forgive her friend, I mean, c’mon), what you need to think of are good questions that are designed to get her to work through this obstacle, and find her own way to the forgiveness.

I might ask questions like these:

• What does it feel like when someone lets you down?
• Why do we rehearse the anger the way we do?
• How does betrayal make us feel about ourselves?

Then, once they do the work to figure out the nature of the problem, you can come in with some verses about how, let’s say, Jesus was betrayed. And how did that make Him feel? And do we betray Jesus too? And now what do we think about forgiving this other person, knowing that Jesus forgave us when we didn’t deserve it?

You see, we’re starting with honesty, authenticity, and getting some understanding going, without judgement. We then investigate and pull apart how this problem actually works. And only then can we know what simple biblical principle needs to be applied. 

When it comes to ministry, the less dependent they are on you the better. You want to teach them to break things down for themselves, ask questions of themselves, and learn how apply the Word for themselves as much as possible. You’re always doing your best ministry when you’re putting yourself out of a job.

Anonymous asked: If someone had had some kind of sexual trauma in their past, even if it wasn’t as severe as rape, and they now suffer panic attacks in any kind of physically intimate setting, or sometimes even the mention of any kind of physical intimacy, how does someone ever get past that? How do they handle it so that it’s not so severe that they doubt the wisdom of even being married someday? And if it isn’t, can’t be, or hasn’t been helped, is it fair to marry someone anyway?

Unka Glen answered: Well darlin’ what you have here is a full-on sexual dysfunction. One that requires professional help. And I’m talking about someone with a degree that relates to sexual psychology. And yes, people find healing on this stuff every day. Nothing is too hard for God.

In fact, I’ll give you a preview of what you’ll be working on in counseling: sexual assault is not about sex, it’s about power. And in relationships that are healthy, in the broadest possible sense, you have total control over what happens to your body. So healthy consensual sex doesn’t actually relate to the trauma you went through in a direct way.

Like many psychological problems, it’s about our brains drawing connections that really don’t exist. 

Is it fair to marry someone with this level of dysfunction? Not even close, no. Within marriage you are meant to want sex, have lots of sex, and enjoy the heck out of the sex you’re having. In fact, let’s look at the goal that you’re shooting for when it comes to the purpose of married sex:

Sex is meant to build intimacy, and devotion to one another, as you explore each other’s bodies, learning what feels good to your partner, and then devoting yourself to their pleasure. You build vulnerability as you tell your partner what you like, and ask for it. Healthy marital sex makes you feel sexy and desirable and confident because of the affections of your partner.

Sex provides a natural release from stress. When I went from my usual work day of spending all day behind bars in a tense and dangerous environment, to my wife stopping me on my way out the door and us sharing a very generous marital moment, well, believe me, my ability to do quality ministry went to a whole new level. That’s teamwork right there.

Christian married people sex is supposed to be frequent, fun, and fresh. If it isn’t, it’s time to get counseling. Too often Christians think of sex as something that goes from bad (before marriage) to permissible (after marriage). But in truth, it goes from “good, but not the right time” to “an essential ingredient”. 

You’re supposed to want that sexual future, and be excited about it, and look forward to it. If you don’t, right now is a good time to start working and praying on that.