Unka Glen

Anonymous asked: Hi Unka Glen. I’ve been feeling so down lately and I noticed that it affects my christian life (prayer & devotion). How can I restore it again? How can I make my christian life more lively? 

Unka Glen answered: There are two schools of thought on this kind of situation. The first is that people are sinners, so when they feel bad, or do something bad, it’s because of the sin in their life, and they need to stop sinning, and know that Jesus is the answer to everything. 

The second school of thought is similar, but perhaps a bit more evolved. Yes, we are all  imperfect sinners who constantly feel the pull of temptation from our flesh, but on a deeper level, it’s about a struggle between the lies we’ve been sold, and the truth. Moreover, there is also a constant pull from the Holy Spirit, drawing us closer to Himself. 

Thus, if we break down the lies, it’s like casting off a hindrance and ridding ourselves of those things that entangle us (Hebrews 12:1), and then we can better respond to the pull of the Holy Spirit.

In this second school of thought, sin (and lots of our suffering in general) is the result of buying into those lies. Think about it this way— if I open a person’s brain and implant a lie that says that God doesn’t love you, what would be the likely result? Well, they wouldn’t go to God for strength or comfort because they’d figure God wouldn’t want to give it to them.

So they’d turn to the things of the world to comfort themselves, and they’d have no strength to resist becoming addicted and dependent on those things. But here’s the important part, you can get someone over that addiction, they can confess their sins with bitter tears, but if the lie is still there, then this whole thing will just play itself out again.

At the heart of every struggle, there’s a lie. That struggle could be an emotional struggle, a lifestyle struggle, or a relationship struggle. Dig deep enough, and you’ll find a lie from the enemy (no wonder Jesus called him the “Father of Lies”). Replace it with the truth, and the truth will set you free. 

Here are a few common lies you may have bought into:

• It’s never going to be any better than this
• How can you be saved? Look at what you’re doing!
• God is not impressed with you (and He needs to be impressed)
• You aren’t what God is looking for
• If I changed for the better, I’d be invisible
• I’ve got one good chance to get this right
• Yes, God technically loves me, but…

Your life should be about finding these lies, and replacing them with the truth of God’s Word. Every time you beat up on yourself, you’re feeding a sin-producing lie in your life. Every bad body image thought, every insecurity, all the self-pity, they’re all symptoms of lies that are spreading like a cancer, and taking things from bad to worse.

Know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Here are some truths to focus on:

• You are God’s treasured possession  (Deuteronomy 14:2)
• You are awesomely and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14)
• You are a child of God. (John 1:12) 
• You will not be condemned by God, you have been set free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:1-2) 
• The Son of God gave His life to ransom you. (Mark 10:45)
• You have been accepted by Christ. (Romans 15:7) 
• You have been chosen by God to obtain an inheritance. (Ephesians 1:9-11) 
• You are no longer a slave but a child and an heir. (Galatians 4:7)
• You have bold and confident access to God through faith in Christ. (Ephesians 3:12) 
• You are joined to the Lord and are one in spirit with Him. (1 Corinthians 6:17) 
• You are like a living stone, built into God’s house (1 Peter 2:5)
• You are a citizen of heaven. (Philippians 3:20)
• You have been made complete in Christ. (Colossians 2:9-10)
• You have been raised up with Christ. (Colossians 3:1) 
• You have been chosen of God, and you are holy and beloved. (Colossians 3:12)
• And You have been set free in Christ. (Galatians 5:1) 

Anonymous asked: How do I learn to love myself?

Unka Glen answered: You will love yourself when you see yourself the way God sees you. 

This isn’t something you learn, this is something you accept. In order to accept the truth you have to reject the lies that you’ve bought into. Here are a few you may be familiar with.

— You aren’t good enough. One of the ways that the enemy gets you to swallow a lie, is to  arrange a series of truths in such a way that they lead you to make a false conclusion. Yes, you are not good enough for God to love you because of your goodness. Yes, you have done bad stuff. And all that might drive you to think: therefore God doesn’t think much of me.

Whereas the truth is, because I have done bad things, Christ died for me, taking my punishment, so there is now nothing between me and God. The blood of Christ is an exact measurement of how important I am to God. And it’s His goodness I’m going on, not my own.

— You don’t measure up, like these other people. We all can look around and find someone who’s living a straighter lifestyle than we are. We can all look around and say that someone else knows more Bible than we do. You know what I say? So what. Satan knows every page of that Bible, and even quotes it to suit his own purposes. (Matthew 4:5-7)

But I’ve taken ahold of the hem of my Master’s cloak, and I’ve been hanging on for dear life. Now, it hasn’t always been pretty, but I’m changing, little by little. I’m leaving behind some of my favorite sins and hangups, because I can’t always hold on to them and my Master’s cloak at the same time. And you know what else? I’ve watched a LOT of those straight dudes backslide while my messy little walk is still limping along.

— Just look at all the sin in your life. You know what, how ‘bout you don’t? Hebrews 12:1-2a says “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” You throw off the sin, and you keep your eyes on Jesus, not the other way around.

…All these lies will keep you spinning in circles, and they’re a constant part of your life for a reason. Nothing scares the enemy more than you finding out who you are to God. Once you see yourself the way God sees you, these lies won’t ever really stick. Once you see yourself as He sees you, then you won’t be tempted by cheap counterfeit pleasures. 

Ephesians 3:17b-19a ”I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge…”

Your lies are stupid. I don’t mean that to be insulting, heck if I’m insulting anyone it’s me for believing your stupid lies. Actually, I haven’t just believed these stupid lies, I’ve often lived my life according to them. 

Here’s a stupid lie: I’m the only one who’s looked at porn. The porn business makes about a zillion dollars a year, but I’m the only one? Heck, if Christians alone stopped buying it, they’d go out of business. Here’s another stupid lie: people won’t think I’m cool if I’m a Christian. Cool people don’t care what anybody thinks. Besides, what, people are gonna think I’m cool for being nothing?

Here’s another stupid lie: I’ll never find someone to fall in love with, and get married. Dang, the whole world, down through the generations, has found a way to pair off and hook up, but you, in an internet-connected world of nearly infinite possibilities, presents such a huge challenge to search algorithms and to Almighty God Himself, that we can’t find someone for you? C’mon.

Here’s another stupid lie: God doesn’t really love me when I mess up. Heck even imperfect people like me manage to love others, even after they’ve made mistakes. I’m supposed to think that a God who says about himself, “I AM LOVE”, somehow is less loving than I can be?

These lies are so stupid, that by simply saying them out loud, they start to fall apart and lose their power. So all that’s over now. The cure is simple: anything that steals my joy, I’m gonna say out loud what that thing is. Your lies are too stupid to work in the cold light of day.

In Jesus name,

Me

P.S. Bite down on that and suck it.

jessicaaa-annne asked: Hi Unka! First off, I want to say thanks so much for your blog, its a been a real blessing to me! Now my question, I serve with the college group at my church and one of the things I have noticed with our girls is the difficulty in not allowing society to dictate what is beautiful and what is not. A lot of girls have gone through things that, in their mind, has diminished their worth, looks, intelligence etc. How can I, other than through prayer, help them see themselves as Christ sees them?

Unka Glen answered: Okay, I’m gonna give you some of my super-secret ninja ministry moves here, but keep it to yourself, this is powerful stuff… Let’s start with this: we tend to assume that when people have severe struggles, that they’re totally dug in to their way of thinking. We assume they’ve thought it out and considered all the angles, and that our only hope is to debate them long enough to discover something they haven’t thought of yet.

The hidden reality here is that if you look at most people’s hangups, even the severe ones, they are not only not thought out, they often don’t even make sense to the sufferer. You can ask the person, “why do you hate yourself so much, what makes you such a loathsome person?” and they can only say, “I dunno, I just feel it so strong.” So what I’m saying is, the thing that drives people nuts is mostly in the dark.

So you have to take these hidden struggles, our unexamined thought processes, and bring them to light. We want to make them more concrete and real. Jesus said, “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free”. The idea is to find the hidden lie, expose it for the source of pain that it is, and put God’s truth in that spot. 

So let’s start with something like this:

“Imagine your brain as one big control panel. All sorts of readouts and blinking lights and various controls that you use to deal with your thought life. On that massive control panel is a big knob with a pointer on it, and it’s labeled “BEAUTIFUL”. If this knob is turned up, you will think of yourself as beautiful, inside and out. Not flawless, not perfect, not desirable necessarily, just beautiful. 

So the key question is— why in God’s name would you let anyone else fiddle with that knob? Even someone you love, even someone you trust shouldn’t have access to that knob. If they truly loved you, they’d leave it turned up anyway, and if it turns out that they didn’t love you, they could flip that knob all around and have you riding a very ugly emotional roller-coaster. Heck, you wouldn’t give this guy your ATM pin number, but you’d let him monkey with your self-image? Heck, you’ll even let people in magazines, people who don’t even know you, decide where that knob should be set!

It’s your brain, why not ask God where that knob should be set, lock it in, and move on.”

Of course, this is just the top layer, you need to keep digging into these hidden thought patterns using the same technique. So let’s say one of your ladies comes along and says, that she’s unwilling to see herself as beautiful because she was molested as a child. Well you can already see the lie there. Sick people do what makes them feel good, they aren’t looking to treat people how they deserve. They victimize whoever they can.

The behavior of a sick person marks him as a sick person, but it’s not exactly a critical assessment of their intended target. The thing that makes this behavior evil is precisely that they don’t care about the people they abuse. When you you’re a kid, you might think that adults know you and that their behavior is based on your character, but as a grown woman, you know some adults treat people like objects, with no regard for who they are at all. 

So, it’s still your knob, it’s still your decision, why in God’s name would you let a mentally sick person even comment on something so important? …and so on. Also, remember that it takes courage for people to move on from issues that have shaped their identity.

From time to time I get questions about suicide, like the following:

“I’m feeling really troubled because of the things that happened in the past. i often scratch myself when i get flashbacks. There are a total of more than 13 scars on my left arm. I’m on my way to recovery but sometimes i stumble and fall. The emotional pain from within kills and suicide thoughts enter. I’ve tried suicide twice but both didnt work. I really dont know what to do now.”

Well, the last thing anyone wants to do is to appear glib or uncaring about suicide, but we can’t move forward without honesty and frank talk, can we? So let’s dispense with fooling around and talk straight.

In the words of that great social philosopher Andy Dufresne, “it comes down to a simple choice really—get busy living or get busy dying”.

If you wanted to be dead, you would be dead. What you don’t want, is to go on living the life that you have. And I’m sure nobody would blame you. But here’s the thing, if you’re aren’t determined to change the course of your thought life, you’re going to exist in this kind of shadowy, dull, ugly world that nobody can quite bring you out of. The fact that you’re reaching out means that you DO know there’s something more out there, and that you DO want to take hold of it. So own that. Be about that. You are in this to win this. That’s who you are.

At the heart of this situation is a lie. All we have to go on here is: “things that happened in the past”, so taking a wild stab, I would guess something very wrong was done to you, and you feel like this thing defines you. It doesn’t. If someone does something evil to you, that says something about THEM, it doesn’t say anything about YOU.

That’s the kind of lie we’re looking for.

Once you identify the lie at the heart of your grief, then you’re at the root of this entire struggle. All this misery is built on the back of this lie. Once you find that lie, you pray this prayer:

Dear Lord,

I’ve bought into this lie for too long! It always felt so true, but now I know it’s a lie. I’ve wasted too much time and way too many tears on this stupid, filthy, lie from Hell. So I’m putting my foot down, and declaring my intention to chase this lie down in every form, in every corner of my mind. I will rip it out by the roots and give you these lies Lord, for you to take them out of my heart, soul, and mind.

Don’t let me wallow Lord, don’t let me feel sorry for myself, don’t let me doubt You. I need you, I need your comfort, I need to know that you see my sorrows and that your heart breaks for everything that breaks my heart.

Lord, I know the enemy has done everything he could to get me to believe this lie. I know he’s going to continue to do everything he can to get me to believe this lie. But Lord I pray that you give me the power, your power, the power you promised, to rise up and take hold of my destiny, and be a mighty warrior princess that the enemy will sorely regret ever messing with.

• You said: In a previous answer, you mentioned cowardice in the face of telling the truth, and the thought has stuck with me. I never really thought about it before, but I'm wondering if maybe I'm kind of a coward. I tell people what they want to hear. A lot. I tell myself that I'm just being nice, but now I'm starting to wonder. I never heard anyone preach about it in church, and that also seems weird. - Anonymous
• I said:

  You? A coward? Well, it sounds like you might be, but let’s pop the hood and take a look. (See, that’s me telling you the truth, directly and lovingly, that wasn’t so bad, was it?). As I mentioned in that post, sometimes people are really asking for reinforcement more than they’re asking for a serious assessment, so being overly harsh in that moment is making the cure worse than the disease. The real problem is, once people sense you fibbing and selling yourself out, you’ll loose their respect, and your words will lose their meaning. So how do we tell the truth, and still be loving and gentle?
  
  I say channel your favorite Southern aunty—
  
  You: Can you tell that I’m wearing spanx?
  Aunty: Oh, honey.
  
  You: Does this dress make me look slutty and desperate?
  Aunty: Oh, honey.
  
  You: Why does my boyfriend treat me like a desperate slut?
  Aunty: Oh honey, come here and let’s clean you up, your tears are makin’ your clown makeup run all over your face.
  
  All that is better that this—
  
  You: Does this dress make me look slutty and desperate?
  “Nice” Friend: [voice goes up three octaves] Umm… Well… Not really. I guess it’s really up to you. Maybe wear it with a scarf. And a winter coat.
  
  I sense that you might be one of those Christians, and having read your owner’s manual, I can report that you are certainly meant to live life fearlessly, and that cowardice is indeed a sin. From what I can gather, the problem is trusting yourself to make everything work out, as opposed to trusting God with that job. And if you haven’t heard a sermon on it, ask your pastor if he’s afraid of getting fired for being too much of a truth-teller.
  
  I think though the key word in your question is “nice”. It sounds like nice is what you do instead of telling the truth. Niceness may have been sold to you as a virtue, but it’s not. Gentleness is a virtue. As is mercy, patience, kindness, and careful instruction. And the Bible does say you should utterly be about all those things. But when you use the word nice, you’re referring to a process whereby you put your need to be liked above their need to hear something that could bring healing. That’s not virtuous, and it’s actually a long way from nice.
  
  We’ve all encountered obnoxious Christians. Unka Glen more than most. Way more than most. And dang we don’t want to end up like that. So we hold to this instruction: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect”. Set your mind on telling the truth, and a loving way of saying it will present itself.

  *** You can post your own question to Unka Glen, just click on the question mark at the top of the page. ***

• You said: I read the story of Rahab in the bible, how she hid the spies. I thought lying was always wrong. I don't want to sin, but can I lie for a good reason, like to cover for somebody? - Anonymous
• I said:

  A recent conversation with my wife might illustrate something here:

  Her: Do I look fat in these jeans?
  Me: No.
  Her: You’re not even looking.
  Me: That’s right.
  Her: Then how can you tell?
  Me: Because this ain’t the hill I want to die on.

  When my wife asks me if she looks fat, she’s really asking me if she looks attractive to me (it took Unka Glen a lotta long years and all his genius powers to work out the translations on this stuff). So I’m answering the implied question honestly, even if I’m going so far as to ignore the question as stated.

  So we aren’t talking about these kind of “lies”, we’re talking about intentionally deceiving someone. Well, here’s the deal on that. It doesn’t take much brains to realize that living life as a Christian can’t really be done as a set of rules. One commandment tells you to honor your father and mother, another says don’t steal. So what if your father tells you to steal? There has to be a sense of which of these things are more important.

  Careful readers of the New Testament will make note that Jesus spoke to this. The religious types of his day had decided the rules that were most important were: not working on the Sabbath, dietary laws, and being stupid crazy particular about giving a tenth of whatever they had in offerings. Here’s what Jesus said:

  ““Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

  Justice and mercy are more important (and a careful reading of the Old Testament would make that very clear), and most people, deep down, know what the more important thing they need to get right is. It’s really a question of courage. Do you have the courage to tell the truth about what you’ve done wrong? Do you have the courage to tell your friends that your integrity isn’t something you’ll trade for an opportunity for them to do something irresponsible? Do you have the courage to sit at the same table in the lunchroom with the gay kid everyone has been picking on? Do you have the courage to tell your boss to kiss your big lumpy butt when he asks you to do something wrong? If not, know this: cowardice makes everything about us a lie, and it’s a sin worth confessing.

  …And just to recap: my wife, without question, does not look fat in those jeans.

  

  *** You can post your own question to Unka Glen, (pictured here thinkin’ up somethin’ amazing) just click on the question mark at the top of the page. ***