Several years ago, a young lady who was friends with my wife and I, flew out to Arizona to meet with me personally. She informed me that she felt like God had told her to come to Phoenix and Darin would give her a “word” from the Lord. I’m sure you can imagine the pressure that this type of a set-up puts on someone. Immediately, my mind begins to search frantically for something super spiritual and profound to tell her that would make her trip worth it. In my early years of being a pastor, something like this would make me want to quit my job and move out of the country.

Unfortunately this is quite a common thing in the Pentecostal world. People will travel from conference to conference chasing the latest “prophet” or evangelist in the off chance that he or she might have a “word” for them. Our friend was no different. She wanted to know what God wanted her to do.

As she and I walked through the grocery store picking up food for dinner that night, Iinformed her that God had given me the answer to her question. He had given me the “word” that she came for. I told her that I could give it to her right there in the produce section of Safeway, or we could wait until we were home in a more private setting. She immediately got a look of nervousness on her face. She had spent about three hundred dollars on a plane ticket, countless hours in prayer and meditation, and now she was about to get her answer. It all came down to this. She didn’t want to wait. She told me, “Give it to me now - I want to know what God wants from me.”

We stopped by the eggplants and I reached out and took both of her hands in mine and looked deep into her eyes. She was quiet with anticipation. I said;

“Nothing.”

“He doesn’t want anything from you.” 

I have found that a common concern that people have when they’re first introduced to the grace message is whether or not it’s okay to stop “doing” stuff for God. When they hear that our relationship with God is not based on works, they worry that they might become lazy and unfruitful for God’s kingdom in the name of grace. I’ve watched many people “play it safe” and continue their works lifestyle while trying to embrace and understand the grace message. It just feels so free-riding and irresponsible. It feels like you’re taking advantage of God and using His grace as an excuse to do nothing. Many people spent most of their lives talking down to people who don’t do as much for God as them, and now the prospect of becoming slothful and lax, is more than they can bear.

Many people prefer to believe that it’s not about works, but they still want to do the works, just in case. Their works soothe them when they feel especially sinful and undeserving. Works are like a security blanket for the Christian who isn’tcomfortable getting something for free. It washes that humbling and vulnerable feeling away and replaces it with a self-deserving sentiment. I have found that for many people, works is like that secret pacifier they don’t even know they’re addicted to. Like the alcoholic who says, “I’m not addicted - I can quit whenever I want.” Once they try to quit, however, they find a different reality exploding in their face. 

Most charismatics will tell you flat out that “salvation is not by works,” but by grace. They’ve memorized the verse and have learned to quote it boldly and powerfully, but the reality of their religion is that they don’t believe a word of it. I have yet to meet an Assembly of God pastor who wouldn’t tell you that salvation is by grace alone, but interestingly they will say in the same sentence that they can’t wait to get to heaven and hear those wonderful words from Jesus’ mouth...

The truth is, the works mentality is like a poisonous fog that has infected the surface of every aspect of institutional Christianity. Once I left the Institution and had a few years away, I began to see how much of my religion was works-based. I was astonished to find that the performance-based belief system accounted for about 99% of what I was taught. It is so prevalent in Christian thinking today, that most of us don’t even see how inundated with it we are. This is why some Free Believers living in the wild sometimes go into an all out panic attack when they find themselves doing nothing.

It has been my experience that a person cannot fully comprehend the truth of God’s love and grace until they intentionally stop doing everything.

They have to stop witnessing to others. They have to stop fasting, praying and having fellowship. They have to quit worshiping and cease all serving and volunteering. They have to put down their bibles and stop reading and studying. They have to quit giving or paying their tithe, and in many circumstances they need to quit attending church altogether.Everything they feel they need to do in order to be a strong Christian and pleasing to God, needs to be put down, given up, and completely abandoned. It all has to go.

I have found that people literally have to become intentionally lazy and idle before their eyes can be opened to the beauty and simplicity of God’s grace. Any amount of works will not only hinder the process of grace, but it blurs the vision and makes it impossible to see or understand. Our need for works is the very thing that causes one to fall from grace. It’s that serious!

Once a person breathes in the grace of God and understands that they are loved unconditionally and they are forever safe with Him; they begin to produce things that look like works to the untrained eye, but in reality it’s not work at all. It’s fruit. It happens naturally and without effort because it blooms from love and grace.

Darin Hufford

I once heard a story of a plane that crashed in the Antarctic and the survivors had to hike back to civilization over a period of months. They survived by eating the people who died in the crash. One gentleman actually told of how he carried someone’s arm in his back pack and “snacked on it” as he hiked along. That’s creepy! I suppose if it meant surviving to see my wife and kids another day I might chew on some dead guys arm. I probably wouldn’t refer to it as a “snack” later in life, but that’s just me. 

I’ve watched about five different reality shows where people were competing for huge sums of money and one of the things they had to do was eat disgusting things. We’re talking spiders, crickets, grasshoppers, roaches, dead rats, and even buffalo testicles! I watched one guy on “Fear Factor” eat three-week-old moldy, maggot-filled cheese. I do believe it was the sickest and funniest thing I’ve ever witnessed. When people are desperate, they’ll eat almost anything. 

I personally hate the dark meat in chicken. It makes me want to throw up. But put me on an island for a month with nothing but rats and bats and I promise you I’d not only eat dark meat chicken, but I’d love it! I don’t care for okra in the least. It tastes like Vaseline-pellets to me. Offer me fifty thousand dollars to eat it and I promise you that I’d develop a taste for it real quick. 

I’ve been a Christian for about twenty years now, and in that time I’ve experienced the four corners of denominational thinking. I’ve been to Catholic churches, Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Nazarene, Assembly of God, Four Square, Calvary, Victory Outreach, Church of Christ, and about fifty other denominations that range from cold to hot. You name it, I’ve been there. I’ve seen formal gatherings, informal gatherings, contemporary, traditional, charismatic, and just plain dead gatherings. 

The one common denominator that I’ve noticed in this vast religious landscape of Christian beliefs is that they are all full of hurting and hungry people. Not just hungry people - starving people! Over the years I’ve watched different Christian “Fads” come and go. I’ve seen twitching, barking, laughing, shaking, falling, hopping and dancing. I have found that you can always gauge the level of spiritual starvation in people by what they’ll ultimately accept as food. What will they put in their spiritual mouths, chew up, swallow, and call food? I do not believe that there has been a time in my entire life quite like the one we are living in now. There has been a famine in the Church for so long that people are showing signs of extreme spiritual malnutrition. Christians today remind me of the little starving Ethiopian children we see on the “Feed the Hungry” commercials. Their spiritual bellies are swollen from a lack of nutrition, their bones are showing through their skin, and there are flies buzzing around their faces. 

At this point I believe that most Christians, out of sheer desperation, will eat just about anything that’s given to them. Gone are the days of meat and potatoes. Anything will do for today, as long as it fills the stomach. I watch sincere-hearted people running from dumpster to dumpster eager to find just a scrap of whatever to ease their spiritual hunger pains. People will literally travel hundreds of miles to attend a conference where supposedly the fire of God is being poured out. They’ll wait in line for four hours and give away money that they don’t even have, only to leave blaming themselves for not having received the fire they had heard so much about. 

I recently watched a series of videos of a popular preacher in Florida whom everyone is raving about. After watching about an hour of clips I was mortified by what I was seeing. Iseriously thought it was a clip of some wacky character that “Saturday Night Live” had come up with to make fun of Christians. What astonished me was how easily all the people in the audience were led astray by something so obviously screwy. The things this guy said, the claims he made, the ridiculous things he taught, and his silly slap-stick antics were so unbelievably whacked out, it was astonishing to see how blindly people followed him. 

This guy is a convicted sex offender. He’s covered in tattoos (of terrible things). He has piercings all over his body and he claims that God tells him to punch people in the stomach and kick little old ladies in the face. He also talks about these insane visions he claims to have had that go against ALL of scripture. The supposed visions are so positively wacky and off the wall, that they remind me of something my three-year-old daughter would make up when she is in an extra goofy mood during story time. It would be hilarious if it weren’t for the audience full of spiritually emaciated people believing every word of it. 

This is just one of many examples that I’ve found in recent days where evidence of starvation is running rampant in our religion. I understand these people because I used to be one of them. I remember my non-Christian friends trying to lovingly talk sense into me when I was following another popular “healing evangelist” of the day (the other guy). Even they knew that this guy was a crazy charlatan. My friends asked for verified proof that people were really getting healed, and I remember secretly not wanting to investigate that because I wanted so badly to believe it was really happening the way he claimed it was. I felt that asking for proof would be a lack of faith on my part, and I feared losing a blessing from God if I went down that road. It was honestly more fun to just believe it was true. It was fulfilling. I suppose I knew in my heart that things were grossly exaggerated, but I didn’t want to lose that excitement I was feeling in my spirit. 

I remember that giddy feeling that would come over me when I would hear the crazy stories about visions and encounters with God that my evangelist guy claimed he had. Though it did sound a bit “off” to me, I was just happy that something was happening somewhere to someone; even if it wasn’t happening to me. I think that’s where the giddiness came from. There had been drought and famine for so long that my heart would leap at the mere suggestion of rain. Also, in a twisted way, it both gave me hope and took my hope away at the same time. It gave me hope because I thought, “Who knows, if this is happening to him, it could happen to me.” It took my hope away because when I came back down to reality, I knew that it wasn’t ever going to happen to me. It was just too big and, quite frankly, too crazy. 

I remember driving for three hours and waiting in line for another six hours just to get a nose-bleed seat at one of his crusades. I didn’t want anything else other than to know that God was real and He noticed me. I remember driving home after the service feeling like I missed it. I totally understand spiritual starvation to the point where I can recognize that hollow look in someone’s eyes from a mile away. It’s an unfulfilled hungry look that is clouded with desperation and self blame. This is the look I see in most modern day Christians. 

The institution of Church, in my opinion is a watering-well business. They dug the hole, they attached the bucket to the rope, and they set up the pulley and crank system so people could get water, and they distribute it to all who come. It’s a great business because everyone needs water. The problem is that when people actually encounter Jesus, he causes them to overflow with living water from within and they never thirst again. That’s not good for business! 

I think institutional Christianity ultimately survives on keeping people in a constant state of starvation and dehydration. “Living Water” cannot be distributed to your customers when you’re in the business of selling water. That’s suicide. Arrowhead wouldn't last a day if people got wind of this Jesus guy who could make them not thirst anymore. 

I remember pondering that “Living Water” verse in the Bible years ago and secretly wondering why I was still thirsting. That passage alone was evidence that I was missing something, and I think it’s evidence that most of American Christianity is missing something. People don’t travel three hours to hear a popular preacher speak if they’re not thirsty. They don’t pool their money together and send their pastor to Florida in hopes that he’ll bring home the fire unless they're starving to death. People also aren’t ready and willing to believe any crazy thing when they are well fed and satisfied. These things are the result of severe hunger.  

When people don’t know how God feels about them, or they suspect that He has less than favorable feelings towards them, they begin to hunger and thirst. When people don’t know where they stand with God at any given moment, or they attempt to calculate exactly where they stand based on their performance or lack thereof, their spiritual stomachs begin to growl and their lips become dry and chapped. When people think that Christianity is about NOT SINNING, their spiritual bellies begin to swell from lack of nutrition. When they believe that they were put on this earth to complete a job that God created for them to do, they ultimately find themselves crouched down waiting for the food truck while flies buzz around their lips. . 

The moment I realized that He loved me just the way I was, EVERYTHING left me in an instant. My hunger and thirst were gone immediately and I never again attended another conference or "how to" workshop that the watering-well system of Church had to offer. I never even searched the book store for a Christian book to read. Every single behavior that I had lived with up until that point, ended the day I realized He and I were fine. I can honestly say that I thirst no more. Jesus was right.

 

Darin Hufford

Living in the wild is about the only way I know for a person to authentically connect with God on a “one-on-one” level. Christianity has become a crutch for many people with it’smany laws, traditions and doctrines. Often times, we find that the things we “hold to” actually end up taking the place of real relationship. They not only get in the way, but they make it impossible because people are encouraged to hang their faith on these things rather than on God Himself.

Before long we end up saying things like, “Do you believe in the bible?” or “Do you believe in the church, the trinity, or the virgin birth?” In a desperate attempt to link ourselves to God, we build a chain with all these beliefs to hold us up. The problem is that our beliefs aren’t in God Himself, they are in things. The moment one of these things are called into question, we lose our faith completely. This is why so many people fall away from their faith when their pastor has an affair or if they happen to see a movie like “The Davinci Code” and the things they’ve “held to” are shaken.

The church knows that people’s faith is not based on God, but on stuff. This is why they go nuts when movies that contradict their doctrine come out. They fear that many will fall away on account of that movie, and they’re right. That’s exactly what happens because people don’t know God anymore; they know stuff. People’s entire faith rests on the stuff they’ve been taught. Mess with the stuff and you mess with their faith in God Himself. Take the stuff away and you take God away.

The problem is that Christianity has become a religion. It’s become a system of beliefs that a group of people hold to. It was never meant to be this. Christianity was meant to be a personal experience between an individual and God. Religion demands that everyone believe “stuff” in unison. It focuses on the stuff and calls it holy and infallible. It lifts the stuff up and obsessively talks about it as though eternal life comes through the stuff. In the midst of all this stuff-worship, no one ever connects with God. They can’t as long as their faith is in the “stuff.”

Faith is given to each of us for one purpose. It’s our personal line to God. We are to put our portion of faith in nothing other than God. Because faith was created for this reason, it naturally makes anything it is put into, its god. Unfortunately, religion holds up stuff and encourages us to put our faith in it. Once we do, we lose. Faith wasn’t for stuff, it’s for God. When we chose to put faith in stuff ABOUT God rather than in God Himself, we end up in a spiritual state of limbo where our stuff is our god. We become like a fan-club of a famous movie star sitting around comparing notes and collecting trinkets, thinking that we know this person because we study stuff about them and possess something of theirs.

We also end up making God into a vending machine because stuff-worship disallows our hearts to embrace a personality. Stuff-worship demands consistency and predictability. Only a machine behaves this way. Faith makes whatever it is put into, its god. Because of the state of American Christianity, god has been presented to the world as a heartless machine or a big book that is void of personality.

Eventually stuff-worshipers begin to describe their god (stuff) as having the same attributes as God Himself. They start saying things like, “The bible is infallible and perfect,” “It is to be called the Word (which is Jesus Christ)”, “You have to believe in the bible in order to go to heaven” and “The bible is holy and reading it is the equivalent to hearing from God.” They encourage one another to meditate on the bible and put it in their heart. They’ll even start “Bible churches” and spend hours in those churches studying the bible. They’ll support missionaries who go to other countries where people don’t know about God and they’ll smuggle bibles to them thinking that they actually brought God there.

Many people see their church as being infallible and holy. They’ll consider the sacraments to be equal to God. Even communion goes from remembering Christ to becoming Christ. Their forgiveness of sins come from the church and their salvation is in the hands of the church. They're told that when they give money to the church, it's the same as giving to God Himeslf. The words of their pastor or priest become the words of God. Every attribute of God is attributed to the stuff people have put their faith in.

I get emails daily from people frantically defending their stuff to me. They’ll read an article I wrote that encourages folks to retract their faith in stuff and put it in God, and they’ll immediately see it as an attack on their god. In reality, it is. It’s an attack on what their faith has made its god. If their stuff or their god is shaken at all, they become terrified. They’ll say stuff like, “If I can’t believe that the entire bible is infallible, then I can’t believe any of it and all is lost”, or “If I can’t believe in this promise, I can’t believe in any promise,” or “If this one thing isn’t true, then none of it is true.”

I think we do this because as human beings in a physical world, it is our carnal nature to be drawn towards things that are tangible. We want something we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears. The idea of knowing an invisible God within our heart seems impossible. If we can’t touch Him, hear Him, or see Him, we don’t believe we could ever know Him. This mentality is perpetuated and magnified as we put our faith in tangible stuff. Eventually, It becomes even more difficult and impossible to connect with God in our hearts because we’ve fed ourselves a steady diet of physical things. The extremely raw truth of living this way is that we are really a bunch of atheists, who like to practice rituals.

Most Christians would be furious to read those words, but I honestly believe it's true. I think our entire religious system is set up the way it is because deep in the hearts of the hierarchy they are atheists. They don’t trust that anyone can hear from God apart from their input. They take it upon themselves to disciple people rather than trust Christ to do the job. They decide when the “Holy Spirit” falls in a meeting by dimming the lights and playing slow emotional music at just the right time. They insist on leading worship, serving communion, leading prayer, teaching our children, and deciding where we give and how much we give. Leaving these things up to the individual and God is not an option because when push comes to shove, they don’t believe there is a God.

I think that all of this comes through putting faith in stuff rather than in God. I’ve found that while living in the wild, I no longer have the stuff in my face like I did in the institution. There is nothing in my face in the wild. It’s a sink or swim situation and I’ve come to believe that this is what millions of people need in order to know God personally. Remove the stuff and believe.

The fear of sinning must be taken away if we are to succeed in life.

I once saw an episode of “Fear Factor” where these people were told to walk across an iron beam that was supported by two chains and hoisted almost a hundred and fifty feet in the air. The beam was about 6 inches wide and ten feet long. All they had to do was make it to the other side without falling. 

What I found interesting is that while the host was explaining the task, the beam was lowered right next to the people about a foot off the ground. This girl walked over to it, jumped up on it and skipped across the beam with almost no effort whatsoever. She even jumped in the air and made a 180 degree turn, then landed on her feet and skipping back to the other side. She was letting the other contestants know that she was a former gymnast who had excellent balance and she felt confident that she would dominate this competition. 

Skipping across a beam that’s a foot off the ground in one thing, but once that same bean is raised to a hundred and fifty feet in the air, it becomes a whole different ball game. If the girl had fallen off when the beam was only inches from the ground, she would havejumped back on and assessed what it was that made her fall. Perhaps she leaned too much to the right or the left. Maybe she stopped too quickly or jumped too high. Her mind would easily focus on the walk and nothing else. However, when the beam is raised high in the air, she would no longer focus on the walk; she would focus on the consequence of falling. When the consequence outweighs the cause - blindness sets in and people become spiritually crippled. Falling a hundred and fifty feet is a devastating consequence that is sure to dominate the thoughts of anyone walking that beam. That is exactly what happened to this young woman when her beam was raised. She didn’t even walk one foot on the beam. This former gymnast with impeccable balance and skill, held on to the chain for dear life until they lowered it again. 

The reason we focus on the consequence of sin instead of the cause, is because our religion has completely denied the fact that Christ destroyed the power of consequence through thecross. We foolishly still say that, “Sin separates us from God.” That statement alone is a long way to fall for any human being. Even godless Cain who murdered his brother, told the Lord that being without His presence would be more than he could bear. When we continuously tell people that their sin separates them from God, we are denying the cross and lifting the bar over a hundred and fifty feet in the air. The result is that rather than assessing the cause of a sin, people now only focus on the consequence because it’s more then they can bear. They become blind and crippled in their walk, and instead of skipping to the other side, they hold on to the chain for dear life. 

The moment a person understands that NOTHING will separate them from God, and He will never leave them or forsake them, the bar of life is lowered to inches off the ground. They can do cartwheels and back hand-springs across the beam because they aren’t terrified of falling anymore. The fear of sinning MUST be taken away if we are to succeed in life! 

When we see the gymnasts in the Olympics do back flips and twists on the balance beam it makes our heart stop. We can’t imagine how they learned to do something like that. The answer is simple. They learned by taking away the consequence of falling. They started with nothing more than a line drawn on a mat on the floor. They practiced staying on the line while doing walk-overs and cartwheels. When they got a little better, they graduated to a beam only inches from the ground. Over time, when they felt more comfortable and they had perfected their routine, they raised the bar to standard height. This is how all gymnastic exercises are learned. Someone “spots” them while they try new things, eliminating the consequence of falling. Once that’s taken away, people will try anything and discover that they are capable of things they never imagined. 

When people hear the grace message they immediately detect a lowered spiritual consequence to sin and It makes them nervous because they think people will intentionally jump off the beam. This is simply not so. When we receive God’s Spirit we are naturally inclined to walk the beam without falling. More than that, we are inclined to do flips,cartwheels, and hand springs across the beam. To a Spirit-filled person, the beam has new meaning. It’s an exciting place to be. Christ came so that we would have our full potential discovered on the beam of life. 

When you fall (sin), don’t worry for even a moment that you are separated from God. Nothing will every separate you from Him. There are certainly consequences to any sin, but losing God is not one of them. Hell is also not one of them anymore. You belong to God. He will never let you go. Nothing in all the universe can separate you from the love of God. Nothing!