The voice Before The Beginning

THE VOICE BEFORE THE BEGINNING Before I formed you I knew you ~ Before breath entered your lungs before your eyes opened to the earth before anyone called your name I had already spoken you within My heart ~ Not later. Not after you proved yourself. Before ~ Before the struggle. Before the wandering. Before the fear. Before the fire. Before the questions hidden in the night ~ I knew you. And what I knew I called. And what I called I set apart ~ Not because you understood but because I already saw the finished picture ~ You fear what you carry because you only see yourself ~ But I do not begin with your limitation. I begin with My love ~ “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.” — Jeremiah 1:5 I knew you ~ Not observed. Not discovered. Known. Loved before formed. Chosen before sent. Beloved before crowned ~ And My love is not fragile. It is not overcome by your weakness. It is not frightened by your failure. It is not undone by your wandering ~ Because what I love I do not abandon. And there is nothing you could ever bring before Me that My mercy cannot wash clean ~ No darkness deeper than My light. No wound greater than My healing. No stain stronger than My blood ~ Because My love does not merely overlook. My love restores. My love renews. My love makes all things new ~ This is why I gave you communion ~ So you would remember that My body was broken to bring you back into union ~ That My blood still speaks mercy life remembrance belonging ~ And this is why I established baptism ~ So the old would no longer define you. So what once held you would lose its name over you ~ Buried with Me. Raised with Me. Hidden within My life ~ Not striving to become new. Awakening to what My love already made new ~ And when you come to Me you do not come before rejection. You come before Love ~ And My love overshadows overrides and overtakes everything that once tried to define you ~ Fear does not define you. Failure does not define you. Your past does not define you ~ My love does. And what My love holds cannot be stolen from My hand ~ Trust Me— you cannot surprise Me. What feels unfinished to you has never been outside My knowing ~ Even now I AM moving through places you thought were beyond redemption ~ Because I did not create you for emptiness. I created you for habitation ~ And what I inhabit I fill. And what I fill I breathe through ~ And what I have placed within you is not small. It is not confined to what you have known ~ Because My life within you does not end where your understanding ends ~ It flows. It expands. It reveals ~ So do not fear the unfolding. I already see what you cannot yet understand ~

~ THIS IS GRACE ~ This is My love for you ~ Eternal. Flowing. Everlasting ~ My lovingkindness surrounding you carrying you remaining with you forever ~

To my Calvinist and traditional Christian friends: I want to ask you a deeply serious question originally posed by the brilliant biblical scholar David Bentley Hart: “Why would some of you want to believe the things you believe about God?”

We have been conditioned to accept a version of the Gospel that sounds less like “Good News” and more like a cosmic horror story. We’ve been told that God is an angry, retributive judge, that you are a wretched creature born in need of saving from His wrath, and that Jesus had to be slaughtered as a penal substitute to appease that wrath.

But if you actually pull back the layers of Latin and English translations and look at the ancient contexts, that entire framework falls apart.

First, the atonement is about healing, not punishment. The idea that God needed to kill His Son to satisfy His own legalistic rage (Penal Substitutionary Atonement) is a medieval invention, largely popularized by Anselm and John Calvin. The early Church, and the ancient Eastern, Aramaic-speaking traditions, didn’t see it this way at all. They believed in Theosis (divinization) and Christus Victor. Christ didn’t die to save us from God; Christ died to conquer death and liberate humanity, restoring us to our original, perfect design. You are made in the image of the Divine, meant to reflect Him, not a broken worm.

Second, “Hell” is a mistranslation. The Calvinist obsession with double predestination (the idea that God creates some people just to damn them eternally) relies on a massive distortion of the text. The Greek word aionios, so often translated as “eternal punishment,” literally means “pertaining to an age.” In the original theological context, judgment is remedial and purifying, a refiner’s fire meant to correct and heal, not an endless torture chamber. God is not a cosmic prison warden.

Third, look at sovereign love versus sovereign power. Calvinism defines God’s sovereignty by His power to exclude and destroy. But true divine sovereignty is defined by perfect love. If God is love, then His victory cannot coexist with an eternal hell where His own children are tortured forever. If even one soul is permanently lost, then sin and death won. But the scriptures tell us that Christ destroys death, and God will be “all in all.”

I know this stirs up a reflexive, defensive anger in some of you. You might mistake it for “righteous anger,” but I challenge you to look inward. Is it righteousness, or is it a subconscious grip on tribalism, certainty, and retribution?

God is not mad at you. You are not fundamentally broken; you are loved, whole, and called to awaken to the divine nature already within you. Stop defending a human-made theology of fear. The real Gospel is infinitely more beautiful than Calvin ever imagined.

Mat_3:7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming to watch him baptize, he denounced them. “You brood of snakes!” he exclaimed. “Who warned you to flee God’s coming wrath?

Luk_3:7 When the crowds came to John for baptism, he said, “You brood of snakes! Who warned you to flee God’s coming wrath?

Rom_2:8 But He will pour out His anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness.

Rev_6:16 And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the One who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.

Rev_6:17 For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to survive?”

Rev_11:18 The nations were filled with wrath, but now the time of Your wrath has come. It is time to judge the dead and reward Your servants the prophets, as well as Your holy people, and all who fear Your name, from the least to the greatest. It is time to destroy all who have caused destruction on the earth.”

Rev_14:10 must drink the wine of God’s anger. It has been poured full strength into God’s cup of wrath. And they will be tormented with fire and burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and the Lamb.

Rev_14:19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and loaded the grapes into the great winepress of God’s wrath.

Rev_15:1 Then I saw in heaven another marvelous event of great significance. Seven angels were holding the seven last plagues, which would bring God’s wrath to completion.

Rev_15:7 Then one of the four living beings handed each of the seven angels a gold bowl filled with the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever.

Rev_16:1 Then I heard a mighty voice from the Temple say to the seven angels, “Go your ways and pour out on the earth the seven bowls containing God’s wrath.”

Rev_16:19 The great city of Babylon split into three sections, and the cities of many nations fell into heaps of rubble. So God remembered all of Babylon’s sins, and He made her drink the cup that was filled with the wine of His fierce wrath.

Rev_19:15 From His mouth came a sharp sword to strike down the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod. He will release the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty, like juice flowing from a winepress.

Yes, God is love but he is also many others thing like just and holy.

Spend some time on ALL the attributes of God.

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