Why is my Faith not Working (what christians are missing)

Feeling a disconnect between your Christian faith and everyday life? 

Are you doing everything you've been told and taught as a Christian, yet, life is not working out?

In this conversation, I want to get real about why so many believers feel stuck even while doing “all the right Christian things.” 

I address the dogma and life-limiting misconceptions that masquerade as holiness, but leaves you in the dark and discontent with yourself and your life!

The iAmThePossible Podcast Experience — SE.9 / Ep.181

What you’ll learn:
🔥 Why rules alone stall growth—and how to move from religion to relationship
🔥How emotions are often misunderstood and misused by believers
🔥 How religion can promise freedom but become a prison
🔥 Practical steps to integrate personal development with biblical truth

📌 self-help resources mentioned in this video 🎥

"Inner Excellence" - Jim Murphy
"Margin" - Dr. Richard A Swenson
"Emotional Intelligence 2.0" - Travis Bradberry
"In Pursuit of Purpose" - Dr. Myles Monroe
"The Mountain Is You" - Brianna Wiest

👉 Free  "What’s My Worth” Self-Discovery Masterclass
https://www.iamthepossible.com/masterclass-sign-up

👉 Free  “Finding Direction for Your Life” Assessment
https://www.iamthepossible.com/finddirection

👉 Free "Clarity Code" Self Evaluation
https://www.iamthepossible.com/claritycode

📩 Email: treveal@iamthepossible.com
🌐 Visit: https://iamthepossible.com

💬 Let’s stay connected:
Instagram: @iamthepossible
Facebook: @iamthepossible
TikTok: @iamthepossible
LinkedIn: Treveal C.W. Lynch

Transcript

Treveal C.W. Lynch (00:01)
You are a Christian and you go to church every Sunday. You read your Bible every day. You pray every day. You attend a small group. You, in your heart of hearts, you believe that there is a God. You believe in the Holy Spirit. You believe in Jesus the Christ. You believe in what was accomplished on the cross. You believe, you believe, you believe.

And yet you stay exactly where you are. You've been where you are for quite some time. Whether it's in your faith, whether it's in your occupation, the relationships in your life, you name it, you frame it, you put it into your context. But wherever you are, you feel stagnant. You feel like there's this invisible wall.

or this invisible rope that just keeps you stuck where you are. There is a disconnect for you. You're saying to yourself, I pray, I read the word, I trust God, I do all of the Christian stuff, I do all of the things that I know that I am supposed to do, I confess my sin, I have an accountability partner.

You're doing all the things that you know to do, and yet there is something that's missing. Today, I want to talk about, ⁓ how do I want to put this?

How your religion

can ruin your life.

That's a pretty bold statement. But let me break it down for you.

Religion is more of a set of rules and ideas.

than it is a faith in God.

Religion says that I'm gonna hold fast to these set of beliefs and I'm not going to entertain, I'm not going to allow in, I'm not going to expose myself to.

other ideas, other ways of thinking, other ways of seeing things. I'm going to just hold fast to this set of rigid rules and regulations that I've learned or I've picked up over time. And that's going to be how I go about my life. The problem is, that that only gets you so far.

It can only do so much. Your unwillingness to allow yourself to expand on a mental level, a spiritual level, a cognitive level.

keeps you where you are. There's a fear that's built into religion that says if I expose myself to something else, then I'm either sinning or I'm disappointing God or I'm ⁓ not being faithful. I'm somehow disgracing the cross or my faith in Christ.

I'm lukewarm in my faith. I'm being new age. I'm being ⁓ hypocritical. I'm in danger of backsliding. These are some of the things that I've heard over the last 25 years, some of which I've even been exposed to on a personal level. And I'm not calling anyone out and I'm saying that anyone's wrong or evil or bad.

But if I've lived this and if I've experienced this and I've seen this in my own life, then perhaps there's someone else out there today.

that you've done everything that the religion of Christianity has taught you to do, and yet there is a huge gap. There's a huge disconnect when it comes to a level of satisfaction in life, a level of contentment in life. You served in the ministries faithfully. Again, you're

doing all the things, you're upholding all the rules and regulations. And yet there's still something that's missing within you. There's still a void within you. And you're asking yourself, you're questioning yourself, you're questioning God, you're questioning your faith, you're questioning life itself. Why is it that I've done all these things? I do all these things. I stay in line, I stay in step with the Spirit as the Word of God says. I do all of these things and yet there's still this disconnect.

And when I say ruining your life, religion can ruin your life, what I'm saying is that there is a life to the full, to the abundant. There is a life that is accessible, a life that you long to express, a life that emanates from you that you're missing out on. And that might be the gap. That might be what you're sensing.

there's a lack of the life flow from within you. And today I wanna talk about this.

this, maybe it's a cultural thing, but it seems like there's a pushback on what you would know as self-help or personal development or self-development, content, information, books, courses. It seems like

It's taboo or unacceptable for faithful men and women of God to fully dive into, to fully incorporate self-help tools, to call it that.

to maybe attend a conference, to pick up a book, because it would be labeled New Age or it would be labeled in some way, whether you can articulate it verbally or you just meditate on it in your heart. You may be saying, well, that's anti-Christ, that's demonic, that's not healthy for Christians because we're...

We're to base everything on the Word of God. Everything can be found in the Bible. Everything, all that I need, right, can be found in the Bible. And the truth is, that's not true. It's not true. The Bible is not all you need. Everything is not in the Bible. Here's how I know it on a very practical level. If you are a Christian, it's likely that you have a pastor.

If you have a pastor, very likely that you can visit your pastor's office. And if you visit your pastor's office, it's very likely that they have a bookshelf, a library, pastors all around the world. They spend thousands of dollars on books because they need to read something other than the Bible.

If it was all contained in the Bible, there would be no need for the library. If it was all contained in the Bible, there would be no need for the educational system. If it was all in the Bible, then your pastors would not be purchasing book after book after book. They wouldn't be reading anything other than the Bible. That is one of a million examples that I can give, but it's very practical. I know you can grasp it.

and it's right there in your face. So no, we need more than the Bible. The Bible provides the basis, the foundational truth of all that we need, but to expound upon that, to build upon that, to get all that we need to live a fulfilled, complete life.

We're gonna need to learn something other than the scriptures. That's just a fact. It's not demonic, it's not evil. You're not betraying the faith. But what I've discovered is that in many cases, we as Christians have a very hard time accepting self-help for just what it is. Maybe it's the word self.

We've got this negative thing about self. We've got this negative thing about serving self.

You know, if you go into a restaurant and you're hungry, for example, you walk into a restaurant and you're really, really hungry, you sit down at a table and ⁓ let's say you're out with some friends, let's say, and everyone gets a menu and everyone orders and everyone eats. But you say, know what, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna order anything. I'm just gonna sit and I'm gonna watch you guys all eat. Now your stomach is growling, you're hungry, you haven't eaten in days.

And you just go in and you sit down with your friends and they're all eating and they're all, you know, joking and laughing and telling stories and having a great time. And you're there sitting amongst them and you're starving. Your stomach is growling. You're having hunger pains. But you choose to say, no, I'm not going to serve me. I'm not, I'm not going to take anything in. I'm just going to make sure everyone else surrounds me around me.

is served and taken care of and everyone else has their supplements and subsistence and everyone else is eating good and I'm just going to sit here like a good Christian and I'm going to sacrifice. I'm going to just make sure that everyone else is taken care of.

That wouldn't make a lot of sense, would it? No, on a practical level, you just wouldn't do that. You're hungry. Your stomach is growling. You need food. You need nourishment. You would find it perfectly okay to go into the restaurant and to order something from the menu and have someone serve you. You're serving yourself.

When they bring you your plate, what do you do? You pick up your utensils and you eat. You eat. You're serving your need. There is an internal need, a physical need for you to eat and you're serving yourself. But why is it on a spiritual level? Why is it on a mental level, cognitive level? Why is it on a psychological level that when it's time for self to eat,

to grow, to develop, to get full, to grow, to get what it needs, that somehow now it's demonic and Satan has a hand in it and it's new age and it's weird and it's woo-woo and it's all these other titles and labels and you defend it with saying that all I need is the Lord and all I need is Christ.

and God's gonna show up and show out. God's, you know, I'm waiting on the Lord. Listen, hear my heart. All those things are good. Here's what I'm championing. Here's what I'm trying to explain. There is a desperate need for the integration, the desperate need for the integration of what's labeled self-help. Now I know it to be much more than just this overarching idea of just self-help.

What I come to know it as is knowledge of self, how I work. How I work is so important to understand. Here's why. Let me give you the value and I really should have started with this.

Again, really as I started, you're doing all the Christian things and yet there's a disconnect because your life isn't progressing as you desire. There's something still missing. Well, what could be missing is that you, like me, when we got saved, when we became a Christian, guess what? Newsflash. We didn't stop being human. Let me say that again for the people in the back.

When we got saved and we became Christians, followers of Christ, believers in the Christ, when we took that on, when we had that transformation, when we, you know, when that moment happened, we did not stop being humans. We continued to be human.

and humans work a certain way. We have a mind, we have a brain, we have a soul, we have a physical body. There is so much as we like to say, meat on the bone. We're not just spirit. We're not just spirit. We are spirit, but we have a soul. We have a mind. We have a brain. We have a body.

have a nervous system. have so much un... How do I wanna put this?

uninhabited, unexplored, undiscovered territory. There's so much room for us to grow as individuals. There's so much more for us to know. Let me give it to you on some practical levels. You may be a overweight Christian who desires to be healthier. Can you go to the Bible and pick up some nuggets of wisdom on how to get healthier? Yes.

But you know what you're going to also need? Information about nutrition in today's terms. Information about exercise and training in today's terms. You're going to still need a gym. You're going to still need to know how the body functions. You're going to still need to know body mechanics and movements and mobility. You're going to still need to know these modalities of training.

See what I mean? It's yes, the Bible has its foundational truths, but you're gonna still need more information. This is applicable across the board. And today I wanna share with you, I wanna go back to one of my favorite examples because I've seen it just transform my life. Okay, so even more so, I wanna give this example about the way that the mind, the brain works because if you're someone who's stuck in a position and you wanna move forward in life,

then that's gonna go top down. There are some things that are going on in your mind, the way that the brain works and functions, there's something going on there, the command center, right? The heart, even as the Bible says, right? Guard your heart above all else. Make it the number one priority, guard it. Why? Because life itself flows from it, right? And so just because you're saved, ⁓ this works for the saved and the unsaved.

We all should be guarding our hearts, guarding our minds, guarding the information that we expose ourselves to, that we consume. Why? Because it is literally shaping our decision-making capacity. You wanna make better decisions, you have to get some better information working within you, right? Again, the Bible is there as a foundational truth, but you must build upon it.

because by building a point with what we consider self-help, you are able to be empowered to understand what's going on from a mechanical perspective, what's happening within me. let me, so let me just go ahead and share this with you here. Let me put my glasses on if you're watching on the tube and you should be watching on the tube, on the YouTube, if you're not subscribed and you're not watching on the tube, then head over to the tube.

and type in I am the possible and go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel so you can get the visual.

and not just the vocals. right. All right, check it out. One of my favorite books, Emotional Intelligence, Emotional Intelligence 2.0. I think this is the first chapter actually. And so I'm just gonna read this really quickly, but it talks about how the brain, how the brain works, okay? Super, super important. And you see I even highlighted it, because it's really that important for me. ⁓ It was a game changer. All right, so let me just read the verbatim.

It says, here's how it works. All right. Well, you know what? Let me just back it up. Let me back it up to the very first paragraph. The daily challenge of dealing effectively with emotions is critical to the human condition because our brains are hardwired to give emotions the upper hand. That's a game changer in itself. Like if you didn't know that, like if you didn't know, cause you're someone walking around with a brain in your skull.

Right? There's a brain inside your skull that you're operating from. Right? So if you didn't know that your brain is going to give your emotions the upper hand, then you can be a emotional wreck, just tossed all around life like a ragdoll emotionally, because you didn't even know that your brain is hardwired. It's set up as such that it's going to always give the upper hand the advantage to your emotions. All right. So let me, let me go ahead and continue here.

So here's how it works. Everything you see, smell, hear, taste and touch, here's the key, travels through your body in the form of electric signals. These signals pass from cell to cell until they reach their ultimate destination, your brain. They enter your brain at the base.

near the spinal cord, but must travel to the frontal lobe behind your forehead before reaching the place where rational, logical thinking takes place. The trouble is they pass through the limbic system along the way, the place where emotions are produced.

This journey ensures you experience things emotionally before your reason or rationale or logic can kick in to gear. And if you're watching on the tube, it even has a little illustration. Information enters here at the stem, right? It has to travel through this limbic system.

where you can feel the emotions kick off and then it continues to travel to the frontal lobe, right there, the frontal cortex. Their rationale and reason and good quality decision-making can happen. Why is this important, y'all? Why is this important? Because for many of us, we are making decisions like

every freaking day, we're making decisions based upon what we see and smell and taste and touch, et cetera. those, those things, all of those experiences are sending those signals right through the body, cell to cell, hitting you at the stem of the brain, right at the cord. And before you can make a rational decision,

You're going to feel something. You're going to have an, you're going to have an emotional experience. And for many of us, we respond and react out of that experience. It never gets to the, well, let me say this. It gets to the front of the mind or sorry, the mind. That's another conversation. It gets to the front of the brain. It gets there. But usually we have this.

what we call autopilot response knee jerk reactions, flying off the handle. We're just, we're just ready to just react, right emotionally. Oh, that pissed me off. Oh, that made me mad. Oh, why are you doing that? Oh, why they said that? Oh, why they cut me off? Oh, and we're just.

When I discovered this information, you know what it did for me? It empowered me.

to understand that as I go through my day, the initial response that I desire or the initial response that in a sense comes up for me.

is usually not the best one. I've learned to pause. You say something crazy to me, and I'm not saying that I'm perfect. Don't hear that I like, I nail this 100 % every single time. I succeed more than I fail. The more awareness, the more practice, the more you integrate this into your everyday life, the better at it you get. But my point is,

I've learned something called the pause. The pause has saved me so much trouble or from getting into so much trouble. With my wife, the pause has stopped me from getting into unnecessary arguments. With my children, the pause has stopped me from ⁓ being a very critical and a very rigid and a very hard-nosed father. With the pause,

It's kept me employed. You know how many times on my job I felt like snapping and saying something crazy, right? And just losing it, right? But the pause has helped me to, oh, okay, let me, right? And the pause is simply being aware that I'm going to feel something before I get an opportunity to properly and completely process.

what's happening and decide on the best possible response. It gives me time to consider how do I want this to play out. It gives me time to consider how do I want to proceed with this. It gives me time to consider ⁓ other ways to think about it. Because many times you see something, hear something, feel something and...

you initially think, oh, this is the case. This is what's happening. They did this or they had this intention. And the pause says, no, you know what? Is there any other way I can think about this? And if you're asking yourself, what is the pause? The pause is me simply saying, I'm going to give myself 15, 30, 60 seconds. Take a couple of deep breaths.

and just realize the fact that my emotions don't have to control me. My emotions don't have to rule me. They are to be integrated into your life, right? Many times, and I've even seen this on, ⁓ I've seen this on a TikTok, y'all. It's crazy. ⁓ I saw a preacher, you know, ⁓ she was a pastor, whoever she was, but she was up in front of the congregation.

and she was demonizing anger. She said anger is a demon spirit. I said, wow. I said, wow, really? Huh, that's interesting. If anger is a demon spirit, then you got to demonize all emotions. And if you do that, then you're demonizing the very thing that God equipped us with. Last time I checked, emotions came from God.

Yeah. Like if we believe that we were made in the image and likeness of God and we were formed from the dust of the earth and we receive the breath of life into our nostrils. If we believe that God created us with intention, then you got to believe that all that we have from the way that we're built physically, from the way that we're built emotionally, from the way that we're built psychologically, I mean, the whole thing, you got to say glory to God. Look how you hooked us up.

with all of this amazingness that's going on within us. And so for her to demonize anger and to say that that's a demon spirit, I'm like, come on, this is that foolishness. This is where the religion ruins your life. That's that foolishness. That's that religious garbage. How do you demonize something that came from God? Because if you got to demonize one, you got to demonize all of them. So last time I checked, happiness is an emotion.

Joy is an emotion, right? Sadness, mourning, right? The Bible says mourn with those that mourn, right? I mean, right? For the joy of the Lord, right? I mean, come on. I mean, I can break it all down from a Bible perspective. All throughout the Bible, people are experiencing all kinds of emotions from depression. Read the Psalms. You feel me? Ecclesiastics, that's depression. Were they demonized? Were they all full of demons? I mean, give me a freaking break. This is what I'm talking about.

Our religion is ruining our freaking lives because it's so rigid. It's so restrictive and it's so dualistic. pits, you know, religion, ⁓ faith, God, verses, ⁓ all of these worldly people or new age people or woo-woo people or tree hugging people, like whatever you want to call it, all these labels that we put on it so that we can start.

continuing to combat and fight and pick a side. And for me, it's just like, self help saved my life, saved my marriage, saved my relationship with my children. This is one example, y'all. This is one example. I got so many books. I've read so many books over the years. And this is the thing, 25 years of ministry, people have showered me with...

Every time I see you, man, you're growing, you're elevating. Oh man, you're teaching, you're preaching, it's so thorough. You make the word of God, it makes sense, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm not saying that I'm this superhero Christian. I'm just saying that in 25 years, if in the background I've been studying self-help, self-improvement, content, information, books, conferences.

And I've been implementing these things in my life and I've built a quality life and I built a quality relationship with my wife and a quality relationship with my children, a quality relationship in my community, right? A quality relationship with those that are in my church. But somehow I'm involved in something that's demonic. I'm involved in something that's anti-Christ. I'm involved in something that's not of God. I mean, come on, come on. So what I'm...

you know, looking to do in this moment is to tell you that it is okay. It is perfectly okay for you to learn about yourself. In fact, I freaking beg you, please, please learn about you. Learn how the brain works. That's one example, guys. That's a powerful example. If you understand that, do you know how many arguments you will not get into? Do you know how much

how much frustration and just bitterness and back and forth you can save yourself from with just that one example.

This is about empowerment, Christian empowerment. I want to help empower you by sharing these ideas and saying, look at my life, I'm the example. I'm the example. I'm living these things. I'm doing these things. Right now I have a therapist, right? She's not Christian. She's a therapist. And then I know for some, if I told them ⁓ I'm going to therapy,

but I'm not going to a Christian therapist, then you know, they'll have a problem with that. And it's like, no, I chose a non-Christian therapist on purpose. Why? Because I didn't want to hear a million scriptures. I didn't want to hear a million Bible quotes. I didn't want to hear anything esoteric. Like, I'm Mr. Esoteric. I'm Mr. Up in the clouds. I love that stuff. I needed someone that looks me in the eye and says on a concrete level, on a real life level,

you dealing with these things from your past, you dealing with these things and these things and these things, and these are some things that you need to do to address these things within yourself and to help resolve these things and to incorporate these things into your life. Because the more I study psychology, the more I study self-help, the more I study... ⁓

you know, therapy and the more I engage in therapy, the more I understand that most of us as Christians don't understand ourselves. Yeah, we don't understand ourselves. And I'm not trying to point a finger at anybody, but it's the facts. It's the truth, man. We don't understand ourselves, not to the degree that we are able to, that we have access to. Do you know how much heartbreak, heartache?

You could save yourself. Do you know how much progress you could experience? Do you know how you could start to take action on the things that you, that really matter most to you? If you just begin to learn a little bit more about yourself, why do you do what you do? Why do you not do what you do? Why, why, why do you think the way that you think? Right? Why do you have those habits that keep you stuck? Why do you always say those things that get you into trouble? Why do you always go to those places?

that end up not working out for you? Why do you have those tendencies? What's going on with you? Because you've been reading your Bible and that ain't fixed it. You've been praying and that ain't fixed it. You've been going to church and that ain't fixed it. You've been attending the small groups and that ain't fixed it. You've been giving your tithes and your offerings and that ain't fixed it. You've been sowing your seed online to...

so-and-so pastor in them, so-and-so ministry in them, and that ain't fixed it. And listen, to anyone that's listening, I am not saying that any of those things that I just mentioned are not excellent things to do. They are all excellent things to do and to have as a part of your life. They are all excellent. However, don't leave out self-help. Don't leave out...

some of these other things that are available. Last thing I'll say before I shut it down. I was on this channel, this YouTube channel called Jubilee. ⁓ my kids and I, my oldest son, my daughter, we have these faith conversations every other Tuesday. They come over to the house, we sit around a couple of hours and we just talk. We just talk about God, our faith, where we are.

journey. Sometimes we watch content and we kind of have discussions around it, almost like a little small group. And that's pretty cool. I'm so grateful for it. And my daughter, she introduced me to this YouTube channel called Jubilee. And Jubilee is set up as such that there's these videos where you have sort of like an expert or someone that has a very strong opinion. They kind of sit in the middle.

And they're surrounded literally in the same room with, let's say, 20 other people who have a different opinion or different way of seeing it. Or they can have these ⁓ debates where you have one side of the room, ⁓ men who believe that Jesus is God. And then on the other side, have men who believe that, I don't know, Muhammad is God, right? I'm just throwing something out there. But there's these debates.

where it's this side versus this side. And so we were watching this one. And you know, actually the one that we were talking about, this example is what led us to Jubilee. It wasn't an actual Jubilee video, but we were watching this one where on one side, I think they have five Christian women. And on the other side, they had five new age women.

And the funny thing is, is that when the episode started, a lot of the new age women were former Christians. They say, yeah, I grew up as a Christian. I was a Christian my whole life and you know, I found value in it and it got me so far, blah, blah, blah. And I've just become new age, right? So one of the, one of the examples in the new age, ⁓ I guess practices is practicing and utilizing crystals. So.

You know, they use crystals for healing and for other purposes, other reasons. And so they got on this topic, right? Is ⁓ using crystals demonic? And the Christian women were all in on it. Yup. That's of the devil. That's demonic. It's anti-Christ, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And ⁓ what I was telling my daughter was, you know, as they were debating going back and forth, no one's asking questions. Everyone is saying, I think, I believe,

My faith says, my Bible says, the word of God says, I believe, I think none of them ever asked a question. They never, you know, they were never seeking to understand before seeking to be understood, right? This was not a empathetic conversation. Everyone had their opinion and they were ready to bulldoze you with their opinion. ⁓ And so that was already a very interesting approach to, I guess, what they were.

trying to have as a constructive conversation.

Sorry, my mouth got a little dry there. And so as they were talking about these crystals, it reminded me of my grandmother. And we've had these conversations within my family, whether or not she was a witch or whether she was whatever. And I'll do a hold of the episode on that as well, because now that I've done some studying and some research, I've got a new worldview on witches and how all of that started.

And maybe witches aren't what they were portrayed to be. And maybe there were some other things that were happening and maybe the witches were the least of the evil that was happening during these witch hunts and whatnot. But that's, I digress. Nevertheless, my grandmother used to use crystals. And I remember one time going to the Toledo, I want to say it was like the museum. I forgot the exact name of it, but it was a museum and I was going.

I was trying to get into the elevator. We was on like the second floor or whatever it was. And I was, I was going onto the elevator. I was a child. Maybe I was maybe nine or 10 years old, whatever it was. So I'm getting onto the elevator and the door closes. and as it's closing, for some reason I reached back. I don't know why I reached back. Maybe I was trying to keep it open for the next person, but something made me reach back. I reached back and that door.

shut on my thumb and smashed it, man. Smashed my thumb. I still got the scar over my thumbnail. Smashed my thumb, bust my nail all up. It's bleeding. And they rushed me home. We didn't live too far from the museum, but they rushed me home and she, my grandmother who used crystals, she took me in her room and I remember her wrapping it up. And I remember some conversation around

should we take him to the hospital? And my grandmother was like, nah, you know, we good. So, so she cleaned it up, wrapped it up with a gauze. She took some herbs or some, some, something she had was it looked like little herbs and put the herbs on there, wrapped it up and she put a crystal on top. And I kid you not, in like the next day or so my thumbnail had

grown back and I was healed and the pain was gone and the swelling went down and we good to go. Now, I'm not here to debate you and tell you that that wasn't witchcraft or that it wasn't whatever. I tell that story only to say.

You can have one perspective that is, okay, the use of crystals in any form or fashion is demonic. It's of the devil, it's satanic, right? Whatever, condemn it. The other side you could use to just simply say in and of itself, in and of itself, not like you're worshiping the crystals, calling the crystals God, bowing down to the crystals, none of that. Just in and of itself.

Is it possible that the crystal has healing properties? Meaning just like, hey, I've got a cold, so I drink some herbal tea or something and it soothes my throat and I feel better. Or,

The same God that created, let's just say, for example, marijuana. There are those that smoke marijuana as a recreational drug and they get high and they do whatever they do with them. And there are those that have glaucoma or other... ⁓

sorts of cancer or other physical issues, and the doctor will actually prescribe marijuana to help whatever, relieve pain or heal certain things within the body. My point is, that if God can create all these other things that have these properties that can do X, Y, and Z for us, crystals are a natural resource that may have certain properties.

I'm just open to that, just that idea, not do I believe that you should worship crystals, you should use them for healing and all these other things. That's not what I'm saying. And no, I don't believe that. But what I am saying is that as I was watching this episode, the Christian women were so quick. They were so quick to just call it a demon, call it the devil, call it anti-Christ.

called it an abomination. I mean, they were going hard, labeling it, all these other things, rather than just simply saying, you know what? I haven't studied crystals. I don't know much about crystals. ⁓ My initial perspective is maybe we shouldn't be using crystals. However, I don't know. So let me get back to you on that. That's not what they did. They judged, they condemned, they shunned.

They labeled, they pushed further to the margin these new age women.

Why do we do that? Why do we do that? What are we afraid of? What are we afraid of? And maybe it's not even fear. Maybe it's just because we've been taught for so long that we just know what we know. We just know everything. The Bible is the final authority on everything. And if it ain't in the Bible, and if we can't find the scripture on it, then it's just not for us to do. just...

I think that's a very narrow way of thinking. And for some of us, and perhaps I'm talking to you, it's why you're stuck. It's why you're not moving forward, because there's something about you. There's something about you. I use the crystals as an example to say how close-minded we can be as Christians. I don't have a case for either side. Don't hear that. Here I use it as an example to show how we can be so close-minded and how being close-minded

to learning other information about ourselves, how that can prohibit our progress, keep us stuck and living less than the life that God created us to live. All right? I want to encourage you, I want to encourage you to email me.

Iamthepossible.com, you can email me directly. I encourage you to drop a comment below if you're watching on YouTube. I wanna hear from you. What do you think? What do you think about what I just said? What do you think about what I just shared? What do you think, right? And what other topics do you want me to cover? What other things do you want me to address, right? ⁓ I would love your feedback.

I would love to hear from you. Your voice matters. Your opinion matters. I will not judge you. I will not shun you. I will not criticize you. I will not throw you away. I will listen to you and I will learn from you. I am looking to understand before I am looking to be understood. I truly, truly am. I'm using this and I'm trying to create this as a platform where all walks of life, all, you know,

Just whatever you believe in, whatever you think about, whatever you consider, whatever it's, it's, I have no dog in the fight. Like I'm not, I'm not, I'm not here to debate. I'm here. I'm here to unify. I'm here to give honor to who you are and to the way that you think and the way that you see things and your experiences and your, your, your upbringing that all has value. So let me know, let me know what you think. and then also if you want to get started, if there's some, Hey man,

You know, what are some good recommendations? I'm going to put some recommendations of some books that I've read in the description. ⁓ cause if you're wondering, how did you get started? What have you read with some good reads? Where can I start? ⁓ then I'm a, I'm a go ahead and drop those links in there for you. ⁓ so again, none of these tools and none of these resources are going to pit you against God. All they're going to do is provide insight into who you are.

as a human. Remember, you became a Christian, you never stopped being a human. You still operate the same way. And if you have never been taught, right, who you really are and what you really are and how you really work, then I think it's, I think it's certainly time for you to do so. Okay. That is it, guys. Love you guys. Praying for you guys. Believing.

in you guys. Until next time, this is Trevail C.W. Lynch. Mr. What What. This is the I Am The Possible podcast. Experience the place where your possibilities can become perspective. I want you to see all that is possible for you. And that starts by valuing yourself and the best way to value yourself.

is to learn more about yourself so you know why you are so valuable.