The Jesus Privilege
The world is believing a lie. It’s not White Privilege, it’s the Jesus Privilege that makes such a profound difference in one’s life. These troubled times are consumed with looking for someone or something to blame. Followers of Jesus have a core worldview that answers that question. Christ-followers believe that they have one enemy and his name is commonly known as satan. From before we are born he is looking to steal, kill and destroy our present and our future because we are made in the image of God. It is satan’s hatred that causes our problems; and yet, in Jesus, we find the remedy for many of those problems.
White Privilege
Let’s fist summarize White Privilege because in every lie is a kernel of truth that has been twisted. White Privilege is the concept that a white person has unfair advantage in life because of the color of their skin they:
- have an easier time getting a job because of who they know;
- have an easier time in college because they had more financial resources available to them in K-12 because they more likely had a chance to have two parents in the home, a stable place to sleep and go to school and likely never experienced hunger;
- don’t get pulled over by police officers as often;
- don’t get looked at suspiciously as often;
- and so forth.
All of this because of the color of their skin. Whether you believe this is totally false or totally true, you are wrong. Neither scenario is always the case. Racism does happen; but, to call it White Privilege is an entirely mistaken belief and a distraction strategy to keep you from seeing the real enemy. Furthermore, it is racism in it’s own right because it says that bases a belief on the color of one’s skin. This is the very definition of racism.
This is very important; if those things are not always based upon race then what is the cause? We all look for answers and boxes in which to put our problems for the reason that we are looking for solutions.
I submit to you the Jesus Principle as the answer; but before I define that I want to take you on a journey. So set that phrase aside for a moment and come and see what I mean.
Spiritual Roots to Problems
When young and inexperienced, I had a subconscious belief that if you took an at-risk or even abused child out of their environment and put them in a loving home with healthy boundaries as well as every physical thing they needed to live that the child would, over time, thrive. It doesn’t. You can take a child at birth, put them in a new family and they still have a likelihood of ending up with the same likes, dislikes, tendencies, personality traits and even addictions as their parents. Moreover, I’ve seen children raised by abusive parents who would be woken up in their sleep with cigarettes burned into the arm. I’ve seen children locked in closets most of their lives go into the foster system and still live like the caged tiger: set free, but never acting like it. Furthermore, nearly 50% of American women have had some sort of sexual encounter against their will before the age of 18. Victims of sex trafficking are often sold by a relative and it starts in childhood. Also, it is common in the communities of poverty to move every few months, like clockwork, due to the amount of time it takes to move into an apartment that has One Month’s rent free, never pay and then stay there the couple of months it takes to get evicted, then moving to the next Free-One-Month’s-Rent apartment. These children don’t “live” anywhere. They “stay.” You can always tell a person who never felt safe, who never put down roots, because they don’t ‘live” at such and such a place. They “stay” there.
I ask you: how is a person raised in any of those environments have delayed gratification skills and knowledge of saving money so that they are not jobless when their car breaks down and they can’t get to work because they never learned to save money for repairs; or have conflict resolution skills and supposed to hold down a long-term career? How are they supposed to have the coping skills to settle conflict with authority and, especially, trust authority when raised in an environment that makes authority figures the enemy?
There are spiritual forces at work that want these bondages to continue, your bondages. Whether you have an addiction, an anger problem, a commitment-to-love problem, there are often spiritual roots that came from the traumas in childhood or the choices made by you or even your ancestors. The hope is that the Bible makes it clear that “Our battle is not against flesh and blood” and it is never more evident than today.
Yet, large portions of America has long argued over whether spiritual gifts or the devil even exists. How, then, does one defeat an enemy they do not even know exists? No, instead, other things are blamed, and the evil strategies are ignored, leading to a vicious cycle that has no resolution. I submit to you, that you can overcome the bad things happening in your life if you learn to use the God-given spiritual weapons found in Jesus Christ.
How do you know if there are dark spiritual forces at work in your own life?
Before we can solve the country’s problems we have to start with our own, so let’s make it personal. How do you know if there are dark spiritual forces at work in your own life? Here are some symptoms.
- bad things happen to you, a lot – – always getting knocked down
- recurring nightmares or night terrors in you or your children
- addictions
- uncontrollable urges (i.e. eating, shopping, anger, pride, fear)
- even chronic diseases in your family line
- can’t ever seem to break free of the same old rut
- frequent negative thoughts of shame and condemnation
- you always seem to be attract the wrong kind of people or they to you
- things of God make you sleepy
- attraction to dark things (elicit music, cussing, tarot cards, horoscope, magic, horror genre)
- an aversion to Christian worship music
- no longer wanting to read your Bible
- God never seems to hear your prayers
I am in no way discounting the physical or psychological reasons behind these. I am, however, saying there is often more to it and that spiritual problems need a spiritual cure.
What is it like to be free of this oppression?
What is it like to be free of this oppression? That’s exactly the Jesus Privilege. Your jobs start getting better. Your mental health gets better. Your financial situation gets better over the long haul. When you get pulled over you’re not as likely to get a ticket. You begin to find favor with people in other situations. Good people of every skin color begin to gravitate to you for no physical reason.
Before I addressed the issues of these forces at work against me, I nearly died at least 10 times but never after the freedom process, which looks different for many people and many churches but for me was during a one day prayer session. For my husband, it was that he never sensed God speak to him in his prayers and suddenly he did. For me, it felt like i walked around in concrete boots all the time. They were gone in one day! I’m not exaggerating.
This is the Jesus Privilege. It’s not based on a skin color but instead a blood-type (spiritually speaking); the blood of Jesus Christ being the payment for your sins. Your battle against spiritual forces takes on a whole new strategy and it is one that has authority and is one that works.
You have the opportunity to learn to forgive and what it is like to be forgiven. If you’ve accepted Christ and yet these things haven’t happened for you yet, do NOT jump out of this story. Stay with me to the end! Accepting Christ as your Saviour is the beginning of the journey to freedom, not the end!
What is the first step to this freedom I speak of, this Jesus Privilege?
The first step to this freedom I’m speaking of is to reconcile with God by accepting his son, Jesus Christ as the payment for your sins. That does mean you must understand that you are a sinner. To confess Jesus as our Savior means to accept the sacrifice of His own life as the God-required blood payment for our sins. It means you ask God to forgive you for doing things your own way instead of His. It means to ask God to forgive you for rejecting His earlier advances towards you. It means rejecting the belief that you can get to Heaven any other way, like by your own good efforts or your own rationalizing that you can disprove His existence or mandates by your intellectual reasonings. The Bible says that even if we call someone a fool that we are not worthy to be in God’s presence. So, see? Jesus is His only provided way. No one is good enough by their works.
Is there any reason you can’t make Jesus Christ the boss of your life, right now? Would you invite God to take control of your life and agree to do things His way as He directs you? You can! Stop right now and talk to God; outloud! Confess to him that you understand there is nothing you can do can earn your way to Heaven and that you want to accept His way, His Son, Jesus Christ who died on the cross and was raised to life again so that we can be reconciled to God.
Other Steps
- The next step is to obey Him by getting baptized. It is important in getting the full blessings of God that you obey Him in all things.
- The only way to do that is to know what He says and to do that you must read the Bible. Start in the New Testament as it will make more sense to you at first. There are many translations you can get but here is a summary.
- NIV – covers the general meaning of the original language but misses some of the specific meanings. Its very popular because it’s easy to read.
- NAS – great for literal people as the translations are very literal specific
- Expanded Bible – goes a lot more in depth of the total meaning of the words
- Easy Readers Version
- A crucial step to accessing this Jesus Privilege is forgiving others. Matthew 18:21-35 makes it very clear that God is angry with and punishes those who call themselves his but who do not forgive. The beautiful thing is that because it is by His supernatural power, you do not have to do it in your own strength and ability. Begin by asking Him to help you want to forgive the person. Here’s some resources on how. And, if you see them in the grocery store and want to go the other way, in most cases, that means you haven’t truly forgiven. See what I mean here.
- The next step, and this is huge, is going through the steps of freedom ministry or deliverance and then telling the enemy to get out of your life. There are several resources on this that you may like but I find the most effective is to hit it head on and that is Don Dickerman’s approach. That approach is a bit too intimidating for some so i have other resources listed. You can do this process alone or with others. There’s no formula; but there are some crucial steps and it is a tool that God uses to dramatically changes lives.
I lived as a believer without this last step of freedom ministry for thirty years and don’t want any other person to have to suffer that long from the effects of the enemy’s onslaught. There are weapons in the arsenal of Christ Jesus that I had never previously been taught to wield. Don’t wait, my friend. Begin your journey to freedom in Christ, today! What do you have to lose?!