Repent! The lake of fire awaits!

In the past week, the Holy Spirit has been showing me things that have contributed to my spiritual struggles with fear. I believe He is doing it so I can continue to deal with these things and be free from them. Last night I got wrecked at the prayer meeting and got rid of some more of it - including the "spirit of religion"...Below is a good example of some religious propaganda that I internalized as a kid...

This is from one of the tracts that they used to have at the church I grew up in. These things gave me nightmares. All of the tracts had images similar to this and the point was to scare the sh-- out of you so you'd repent.

(italicized comments are mine :) )...

Bad dude dies and judgment day comes:

He visits the faceless, impersonal, wrathful God...



Angel takes bad dude on a review of his life and we see all the bad things he did, like being mean to someone, giving a lady the once over, smoking and drinking. Then they return to God for the verdict:

Bad dude wakes up from his nightmare and of course, repents right on the spot (who the heck wouldn't??) and then asks what he should do next to escape the lake of fire:


Awww, a happy ending! Bad dude becomes good dude and even better becomes well-known as a "fine Christian" in the community from then on (because we all know the goal is to make our friends and co-workers recognize that we are righteous!).

So for the rest of you heathens, if you don't want to end up like the bad dude in our story, then here is how you appease the wrath of God and a few simple rules to follow:

I could comment on this to death but I won't...

I no longer wonder why I spent so many years in quiet terror of my Father God.

Thank you, Jesus and my friends who prayed with me last night while I sobbed out more of the fear.