Episode #277 Spiritual Spammers Don’t Fall for the Fake! – Unforced Rhythms of Grace

Hey friends, it's Jen. Thanks for joining me for this episode of Good God Talks. If you've been around the podcast for a little bit, today is gonna be kind of a unique episode. Because I just got spam called! I've been trying to get into recording all day today, and there's been so many other things, including good priorities that have just taken precedence. My kids are home, so I'm prioritizing family time and meals and activities with them. There's some really exciting projects in the works, which I'll get to talk more about soon. And also, I just got my afternoon disrupted with a pretty convincing spam call.

I just, I feel all of that adrenaline rush still happening and I wanna talk with you about it because it has me thinking about some stuff that has direct application to our spiritual walks. So story time, I live here in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, and I got an incoming call from the Dallas area on my phone. And it was a gentleman who told me he was calling from the sheriff's department, police department, and said that I had missed a jury summons and I was now being held in contempt of court and there was all these things and there's penalty of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we needed to rectify the situation.

And he's giving me codes. He's giving me his rank title, badge number, spelling his name. He's telling me about this process and this thing and this civil next step. He's like, oh, well we got a signature for it, so that's fraudulent. So I get transferred to his supervisor and at this point, I'm starting to like really process all the things that they're saying and more and more red flags are sparking for me.

I've gotten summons before and I didn't have to sign for them. I'm trying to log in online and find the right website to check and where I'm looking isn't showing me that I was supposed to show up somewhere. I say, well I wanna validate this online, which he gets upset about, and I'm not allowed to talk to any third parties. I'm not allowed to be on the internet. Another red flag, and me showing up at the police station is going to be me being processed for arrest, which doesn't make sense. I ask for the address that I'll need to show up at, and I Google it, and it's a empty parking lot.

If he was legit, that wouldn't have escalated that way. There would be validation. The phone number would've actually come up when I Googled it as having a reputable source. He wouldn't have hung up on me when I said I needed to get my lawyer involved in something that was legal. There's all of these things, but even knowing that still I'm shaking right now, And what started me thinking about talking about this with you is that can happen so easily in our spiritual walks.

We take it seriously, this opportunity to live in relationship with God. To be a Christian, a Christ follower is a significant thing. And it's easy to get stressed out by the enemy who comes to steal, kill, and destroy. It's easy to fall into confusing conversations or confusing areas of our faith where people can make it seem like if you don't do exactly what I'm telling you to do right now, you are in deep trouble with the Lord and that's just not the case.

So I started thinking about what helped me in this really stressful phone spammer conversation and it was in part my past experience. I had resources at my disposal. I knew what it had been like before when I've gotten jury summons and my husband has and so I could go back to those things and say, hey, this isn't lining up with that. It was also helpful that I had outside resources to go to.

And so we're in this series right now looking at spiritual disciplines and how they actually can bring delights to us. Spiritual disciplines are not to make ourselves more mature, but to cultivate heart postures that allow us to receive more of the good that God has for us.

In the past, most everything about being a Christian stressed me out. And so the encouragement that I have for you today is if something in your spiritual development, your life as a disciple, as a follower of Jesus, is stressing you out. Go back to the source. Go back to what scripture says. Ask God to remind you of who he is and what he is like. Because oftentimes the things that are stressful and pressure filled are actually spiritual spam. The enemy tries to mess with us by making something look different than it is by making God seem different than he is.

I was thinking about this and I pulled up John chapter 8 and I'll read from the Easy Translation.

And Jesus is speaking to the Jews who believed him, and he says, “Continue to obey the words that I have spoken to you. If you do that, you are really my disciples.”

As those who believe in Jesus, we can continue to walk out the words that he has spoken to us. And the more we live with God, the more we walk out what he has encouraged us and exhorted us, and taught us, the more we know what is true and that truth makes us free. We don't have to bend to any other whim or any incoming attack that will try and confuse or discourage us.

I wanna encourage you to think about areas in your life that might feel hard or stressful or confusing, and in light of that, to ask God this question:

God, you know what I'm going through right now. Please tell me something that is true.

I'm excited for the ever increasing freedom that God wants to share with you.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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