Podcast

Finding the Real Jesus After Life in a Cult. Christy Wood

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Unshakable Hope Podcast, where real life intersects redeeming love. I’m Kellie Hall, and this is where we wrestle through faith questions, such as how do I trust God’s heart when His ways and delays are breaking mine? We’ll hear from people just like you and me, who have experienced God’s faithfulness when life didn’t unfold as they expected.

My prayer is that God would renew our hope in His word and His love through these conversations.

Kelly: Well, hey, guys, before I introduce my guest today, I just want to take a minute and share my heart. I know many of you are carrying sorrow as you walk through the Christmas season. Maybe you’ve experienced the devastating loss of a loved one, or maybe you’re navigating the heartbreak of broken dreams. Christmas just doesn’t look like what you hoped it would. My heart is so empathetic and tender toward you. I know it’s a struggle to sort through the joy [00:01:00] and the grief in the middle of the busyness and expectations of the Christmas season.

I just want you to know I’m praying for you. That you would offer yourself kindness and compassion. That you’d be honest with a few trusted friends about what you’re going through and how they can pray for you. I’m praying especially that you would experience the miracle of God’s tangible presence and love with you during this season, that Jesus would be a radiant light of warmth and comfort like never before.

He truly does draw near to the brokenhearted and save those who are crushed in spirit. That’s Psalm 34, 18. I wish I could meet you over a cup of coffee, but I’d be honored to hear from you by email if you feel like reaching out. Kelly at kelly hall dot org. I love that in Christ, we experienced the reality that joy and grief can reside side by side in the same heart.

So in the show notes, I’ll leave the names of a couple of books that have brought comfort to me in the Christmas season. And just one more thing before I introduce my [00:02:00] guest, I’m taking three weeks off over Christmas and new years, you can catch up with some of the, Podcast episodes you’ve missed, but also I put together a collection of some of the most listened to unshakable hope podcast on Spotify.

You can just scroll through there and see what you might be interested in. It’s titled unshakable whole podcast highlights. 2024. I can also link to that in the show notes.

So now I want to introduce you to my guest today. We’re going to have so much fun. Her name is Christy Lynn Wood, and she spent her teens and early twenties in a Christian cult.

Jesus pursued her heart and rescued her completely through the unconditional love of God. A Christian cult may sound a bit like a misnomer, but Christy will explain all the ins and outs of what she went through. I just want to encourage you to listen through to the end of this podcast, because you will hear many different stories of the ways God expressed his unconditional love to her and to me.

More [00:03:00] than 20 years after Christy came out of that cult, she continues to be passionate about helping people find a genuine relationship with Jesus. She is a speaker, podcaster, and her book, I love the title so much, it’s called Religious Rebels, Finding Jesus in the Awkward Middle Way of Grace and Truth.

Christy, I found your journey fascinating and faith building. I have so many questions to ask you. Thanks for joining me.

Crystal: You’re so welcome. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Kelly: Oh, me too. So just for context, tell us where you are today, like job, kids, . Sure.

Crystal: Sure. I live in West Michigan and we’re kind of having this like snowstorm going on right now. So I’m curious to see if we have school tomorrow or not.

I have a husband, I have two children. I am a behavior specialist at school this year. So I work a lot with, children who are dysregulated and need a break.

Kelly: That’s awesome. I love that your school offers you to these teachers and to these [00:04:00] kids. What a blessing.

Crystal: Yeah, it’s been a great fit.

Kelly: I’m really curious.

The question that I love to ask people is when you are busy, when you are overwhelmed, what do you do to reconnect your heart with Jesus and His joy?

Crystal: I love that. I would say anything have to do with nature. Like I love to get out in nature and take a walk or just sometimes stand outside and just breathe for a while and take some deep breaths and relax.

But yeah, we, we live right behind a river. And so I love if I can just get down there and walk the trails and take a breath and just talk to Jesus. That sounds wonderful.

Kelly: I think I need to come visit you soon. Well, maybe not during this snowstorm. Well, you discovered the real Jesus and the unconditional love of God in life altering ways.

And I can’t wait to talk about that. But first, can you talk to us about what it was like growing up in a cult?

Crystal: Sure. [00:05:00] So it took me years before I finally called it a cult. When I first got out of it all, I just called it being homeschooled in a very conservative Christianity. And then the farther away I got from the experience and I looked back at it, I was like, man, that was, that was pretty weird.

And then even farther away, I’m able to like, that was, that was really cultic. That was a cult. And so I’m at the place where I call it a cult now, but, , my parents got involved actually. When I was 12 and they had been involved with the Institute in basic life principles with Bill Gothard from the time they were in college.

So they went to his basic seminars, as college students, as new believers, their campus minister encouraged them to go. And some friends of theirs had joined the program earlier. And so they had this idea of this is kind of like a really good Christian thing to do. And I think because they were new believers, they didn’t have the same background that maybe somebody would have had to be able to recognize [00:06:00] that.

There’s some pretty twisted stuff in here. And so they just jumped right in. And so I was 12 when we joined and we kind of just slowly left the real world and just isolated ourselves with other people who were like minded, who were like us, who were also involved with Bill Gothard and his homeschooling program, and then just rules piled on.

And we followed a lot of rules and standards, and we tried to be holy and separate from the world. And so there was a lot of things that were considered to be sin, considered to be wrong. It was just a very isolating experience. So for the next 10 years, yeah, from the time I was 12 to about 22, I lived in that kind of an environment.

Kelly: It’s a similar to that Netflix special, right?

Crystal: Yeah. Oh, it is the next Netflix special. No, actually Amazon prime, Amazon prime has the shiny, happy people documentary with the Duggar family and a bunch of other people. And that is my cult. So that is. Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles. If you’re [00:07:00] curious.

Kelly: Yeah, that is so interesting.

I had actually been to a Bill Gothard, seminar one time when I was in college and I drove down to downtown Houston to attend, but I do remember that I would just throw things out that didn’t seem to fit with the Bible. Like I’d take what I could and I realized I was really sifting through a lot of stuff to grab hold of what I thought was helpful and not unbiblical.

Crystal: Well, Gothard was very popular, you know, in the 70s, 80s, even 90s. His stuff was considered pretty mainstream evangelical. And so a lot of people went to that basic seminar. And I like to call that kind of the outer edge of the whirlpool because Lots of people went to the basic seminar. And then you went to the advanced seminar, and then the anger management seminar, and then you got involved in the homeschooling program, and it just sort of like sucked you in, and the farther in you went, kind of the crazier it got.

And so, people would go to that basic seminar and be like, well yeah, that was biblical. And I would say like, part [00:08:00] of it was, probably. You know, and there was some script for scripture verses that were thrown in there and there was enough that if people just grabbed one or two things, like maybe it really did help them

and you really weren’t in far enough to recognize how messed up it was and how twisted it was and how legalistic and religious it really was.

Kelly: Yeah. And so can you just give us some really practical ways, some ways that you lived, some things you did, some things you saw as necessary.

Crystal: So, we started out going to our normal church in town and then after a few years, we switched to a cultic church. So we drove an hour and a half twice a week to Flint, Michigan, where we went to a church that everybody in the church was either involved in the program or trying to get into the program The pastor and his son were heavily connected with Bill Gothard.

His son worked for Bill Gothard. They were right, like, really tight. In fact, we were considered his model church for a while. And so it was just a very [00:09:00] isolating thing. And in that church, I would say more of the brainwashing happened for me in that church because my parents, My dad was actually a public school teacher the whole time I was in this cult.

And so they were trying to be really careful and kind of like sift through things for us and they were never Gothard groupies. They kind of were just people who are trying to use the material and pitch out the bad stuff, keep the good stuff kind of a thing. But the church that were involved with, had youth events and that’s where most of my brainwashing happened.

Most of my, like, just heavily indoctrination happened at these youth events. And, so lot of standards, a lot of rules, like girls didn’t go to college. Girls didn’t get jobs. Girls got married really young. Like sometimes they were not even graduated from high school and they were getting married. Wow.

And so you just had very specific gender roles, specific like expectations for a woman to look a certain way, to sound a certain way. To act a certain way and [00:10:00] my, strong personality didn’t really fit very well into that mold. So I spent years just trying to suppress myself, trying to be someone else, trying to fake it till I make it kind of a thing.

But I mean, a lot of conservative rules anyway, just like, you know, now no rock music. no movies, girls wear skirts, girls have long hair. College was kind of really not encouraged for anybody. It was considered to be kind of this dangerous place where you could kind of get off the track. And so they did a lot of apprenticeships.

Boys would get apprenticed to different people and learn to trade. Yeah, just a lot of, a lot of standards and rules.

Kelly: Wow. It just hurts my heart when I consider those people that have been so wounded and scarred by a representation of who God is that wasn’t true. And so I love, I love your ministry so much.

When did the light finally begin to dawn that what you believed or what you were being taught was really different than what the Bible says?

Crystal: Yeah. So I would say it all started when I was 15, , when I met Jesus the presence of the Holy [00:11:00] Spirit I was praying in my bedroom and I had always been like the good girl who went to church and did the right stuff and raised her hand at Sunday school and memorized her verses.

And you know, one of those like kind of annoying good girls who does all those things, people, people pleaser. So I believed in God. , I had kind of a two dimensional, I would say. Understanding of who he was, he was a concept, he was an idea I believed in it, I did all the right things but he wasn’t real, real to me.

And so I was praying a prayer that my mother had given me a list of God’s names and she wanted me to go and pray these names to God. So I was reading through the names and I was like, God, you’re Jehovah Jireh, you provide for us. And God, you are Jehovah Raphae and God, you are Elohim and like all these different things that I prayed to him.

And as I was praying his names I just suddenly knew that I wasn’t alone. Like, I just felt this presence with me and I’d never felt that before. Wow. And I was like, wow. Oh, my goodness, he’s real and I remember just like jumping up off of the bed [00:12:00] where I was praying and just running downstairs and being like, mom, mom, like God showed up and, and my parents were not the same kind of people that got off and got drawn into the golf got third cult of just these controlling kind of people like my parents were good people who were just confused.

Kelly: Yeah.

Crystal: And so my parents had their own relationship with God. And remember my mom just kind of smiling at me and being like, I’ve been praying that would happen. And so as I was like, if he’s real, like, if he’s real, I want to know him. And so I started praying to talk to Jesus. And I started reading my Bible to, like, look for Jesus.

And so I would take these long walks in our fields, in our farm area, and just, like, talk to Jesus. And I just began this relationship with him. And so I would say for the next four years, from the time I was 15 until I was 19, I was just developing this very real relationship. I accidentally discovered the Holy Spirit.

That I didn’t have to do all these things on my own strength that I could like rely on his strength and he could fill me and like suddenly it was like I [00:13:00] didn’t have to try to follow the rules. I could just give myself to him and let him live through me and just like, like just weird stuff that no one was teaching us these things.

And so, and so by the time I was 19, I was just like, something isn’t lining up. Like the God that I know and the God they’re talking about, just they’re, they’re not the same. And so it all came to a head at summer camp. We had a family camp together and we just had the speaker that came in and he was just really rules based, like just excessively rules based.

And I remember just being like, there is no way that the God you’re talking about is the God that I know. So it just kind of started me on this rebellious journey and I’d always been afraid of being a rebel. I wanted to be a godly person that people thought well of. And after that week of camp, I just, I couldn’t do it anymore.

I just had like a million questions and I started pushing back on stuff and I was like, why? Why? Why? Why? Why? And they were like, stop [00:14:00] asking questions, you know? And I just, I just couldn’t handle it. And so it was just kind of like a slow gradual process of getting out after that, right? I just was like, I, I have questions and this is not lining up with.

The God that I know, and he just graciously would open the next door for me to get out, and the next door for me to get out, and the next door for me to get out.

Kelly: That is so beautiful. I got chills while you were talking about that. I mean, there’s several things I want to respond to. So first of all, I love that God is our teacher.

That the Holy Spirit indwells us and he instructs us and helps us understand the word. He reads the Bible with us. He reads our life better than we know ourselves. I just love so much how he instructed you and what was true about his heart and helped you throw off the lies. And then the other thing that I think is so important to realize is that when you’re in a religious situation where they don’t let you ask questions, that’s always a red flag.

Right? Right. Yeah. I’m telling you, stop [00:15:00] asking questions. We just do this. This is what we believe. Then that’s, that’s danger, danger.

Crystal: Oh yeah. That’s major red flag. Like if I tell people that now, like they won’t ask you, I let you ask questions if they’re afraid of questions, like that’s a good reason to be like, why, what is wrong with you guys?

Like, you know, what am I in?

Kelly: Yeah. Why can’t we be curious? People in the Bible were curious. It’s biblical to be curious. Absolutely.

Crystal: And he can handle our questions. Like God can handle our questions. Like his, if he’s going to hold up, like the truth is going to hold up to our question.

Kelly: Yes. He, he just runs and moves toward the authentic seeking heart.

Crystal: Absolutely.

Kelly: Well, you write about this one moment when the love of God. in a powerful way broke through the lies. So I’m going to read this one sentence. I remember the exact moment when I realized that Jesus loved me and liked me all the time, not just when I had performed correctly. [00:16:00] That is so powerful.

Talk to us about that realization.

Crystal: Yeah. So that would have been like another four or five years after. So like, yeah, so I was, yeah, I was maybe trying to think of one. Yeah, because I got married at 26. And so it was, it was in between that when I was dating my husband when that all thing happened. So yeah, four or five years later, so four or five years later, God is so gracious.

He’s so patient. Like he doesn’t need us to just get it together. You know, I love that about him. He just slowly bring, slowly brings us along one step at a time. And so I, at this point looked pretty normal to the outward eye. Like I had, You know, I was wearing pants, and I was going to college, and I had a boyfriend, and I listened to Christian contemporary music with a drum beat, and like, you know, there’s, there’s things that I was, I know.

Kelly: Look at you, pushing the boundaries.

Crystal: So I looked pretty normal outwardly and I was starting to really try to figure out how to do this real life thing and you know, how to live in the real world and for the [00:17:00] most part was being pretty successful, but inwardly I was a mess. So at this stage of my life I was just struggling with a lot of anxiety with panic attacks.

I didn’t know what they were, so I thought I was maybe dying but didn’t want to talk about it cause that was showing weakness and there was just a lot going on internally that felt really messy. Like, I just couldn’t get it together.

Kelly: Yeah.

Crystal: And was struggling with some anger and some bitterness towards some people.

All these things that I knew were sin and I was just like, I can’t stop myself. And so I felt like everything falling apart around me, like my, my body falling apart was like God punishing me because I was still so formulaic. So even though like things were changing in my heart, I was still following a formula.

If I do this, God will do this. If I don’t do this, God is going to punish me. You know, that’s how I was raised, within the cult, very formulaic. Yeah. And so, I was, I was struggling, like I was, I was a mess and I remember I decided, I was like, I gotta take a walk with Jesus and I gotta figure this out, like, so, I went to my favorite park and I was walking in [00:18:00] the woods and I was just praying and just trying to confess every sin I could think of and just trying to like, you know, get it, get it right.

And as I was walking, I came into this clearing and I just felt the Holy Spirit in my heart telling me like, I’ve never loved you more than I’ve loved you right now.

Kelly: And I

Crystal: was like, okay, cool. But that’s not really the Holy Spirit because I know Romans 8. 1. And so in our cult, we only use the King James Version or the New King James Version.

And in those versions, Romans 8. 1 has an extra phrase that’s added. It would say, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. And so in my mind, I had decided that if I was walking in the flesh, as in like living in sin and being a mess and all this stuff, then I was under condemnation.

But if I was walking in the Spirit, doing all the right things and like, you know, following Jesus and all this stuff, then I was free from [00:19:00] condemnation. And so I was like, there’s no way that that really was Jesus telling me he loved me right now because I’m obviously a mess and I need to figure it out.

So I went home and I opened up my new Bible. I’d gotten a new Bible and it was the ESV version and I opened it up and I read, there is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, period. Yes. And I was like where’s the rest of that verse? And so I went on my dial up internet and I started searching the different versions online and none of them had it.

It was just, there’s no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Wow. And I was like, I’m in Christ Jesus. I’ve never for a minute doubted my salvation. That was something I never struggled with. I knew it was Jesus. I knew he had saved me. And I was like, if I’m in Christ Jesus, then I’m free from condemnation.

And then he. And he really does love me like right now and we’re just like kind of falling onto my floor and just weeping and just letting him love me, just letting him love me and letting him like me and just like just accepting it. And it was, it was [00:20:00] radical and it was a huge transformation. It

Kelly: was huge.

That is so beautiful. Oh my goodness. I love that so much. He loves us and he likes us and there is

in

Crystal: the middle of our mess

Kelly: in the middle of our mess. And yeah, we can be a mess period and we are still loved but what and what I love so much about him is he is always rescuing us. He’s always healing our souls more and more and more deeply to receive more of his love and to walk and more of his grace.

Yes. Oh, I love that story so much. And the other part that I just have to comment on is I love that you ran to Jesus with your confusion. You said this doesn’t make sense. I’m so confused. So I’m going to work it out. Not with my friends. I’m not going to turn my back on God. I’m going to run to God, the one who holds all the answers.

And that’s where I’m going to find out what’s really true.

Crystal: Yeah, that was kind of like my thing for all those years getting out of the cult. It was just, like, I just would go walk [00:21:00] with Jesus. I would just go walk with Jesus when I first showed up at summer camp for the first time when I was working at summer camp in my skirts and my long hair and all these things.

Like, like every break time I would go right off in the woods and just talk to Jesus and try to process all these new things I was learning and experiencing. That was just like my thing. And it was just, yeah, it’s good.

Kelly: Well, I know your heart must just, ache when you see people that are trapped in legalism and trapped in wrong ideas about who God is.

And that’s what your whole ministry is about. Right? Yeah.

Crystal: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think my, my biggest heart, like the heart that I have is I just want people to know the real God and the freedom and the restoration that comes. from knowing the real Jesus. Like he does not want your behaviors. He does not want all of your perfection and your whatever.

He wants your heart and he’s going to then transform that heart to make you be the person you were always created to be. That sin has mangled but that’s still in there somewhere. That golden part of you that he wants to [00:22:00] recreate and re transform and just make it beautiful. And that’s what he wants.

It’s like he wants that relationship with you where you are transformed. He

Kelly: doesn’t want our efforts at false perfectionism and I, well, okay, there’s more I want to say about that. But first of all, let’s talk about the term deconstruction. I want you to talk about this. It’s really developed a negative connotation, but I think you redeem this word and I think that we need to see this word in a fresh light.

So I want to read something that you wrote and then I’ll let you talk about it. We can be rebels who seek to know God for ourselves and believe that he wants to be found. We can join hands in the awkward middle way where together we hold the mystery of tension and paradox where we offer scandalous grace while looking for truth.

Oh, I love that.

Crystal: Yeah. So deconstruction does have pretty negative connotation in some circles of [00:23:00] Christians. And it’s funny because they tend to have the same black and white definition of it that I would say some people who are no longer Christians hold. And there’s this idea that to deconstruct automatically means to deconvert from Christianity.

Kelly: Yeah.

Crystal: And I think when we hold that narrow view if you’re somebody who has deconverted and you think that everyone who deconstructs must deconstruct like you and deconvert. It’s a very narrow, like you’re only allowing people to go in this, you know, right here.

Kelly: Yeah. And

Crystal: when you hold that as a believer, I think you are running the risk of pushing people away who are questioning and deconstructing their faith because you’re saying like, well, that’s a bad thing.

You can’t do that. You know, it’s almost like this fear, but to me to deconstruct. So if you look at deconstruction in any other context whether it’s deconstructed food or buildings or clothing, it just means to take something apart to the individual pieces. Yeah. It is.

Kelly: Yeah.

Crystal: You’re just completely taking it [00:24:00] apart.

If you deconstruct a Lego set, you take all the pieces apart. That’s all it means. It doesn’t tell you what you do with the pieces. It doesn’t tell you what happens next. It just says you take them apart. And so I think as I look at the deconstructing that’s happened that I have met so many people specifically on threads lately who have deconstructed, taken apart their faith, but then have built it up again into a new and beautiful thing.

Yeah, so that, that to me is like, you can take it apart and you can look at these pieces and I think it’s necessary because so many human traditions and religious traditions. Junk has been like kind of accepted into our modern version of evangelical Christianity and just we kind of have these ideas that we think, well, this is must be how it is.

And it’s not even true Christianity, it’s just these traditions that we have. It’s just, you know, a version of Christianity that we’ve accepted and called biblical. And so I think it really is important for us to be taking it apart and to say, is this actually true? Like, is this really real or is this just someone’s opinion?

Is this just a tradition? Is this [00:25:00] Victorian? There’s actually a lot of Victorian ideas within our Evangelical Christianity that are more Victorian than they are Biblical.

Karen Swallow Pryor has a really good book about that called The Evangelical Imagination. It’s fantastic. I want to refer

Kelly: to something you said before I forget.

Okay. And so remember where you are. Okay. Okay. I had a friend who was raised Jewish and she started hearing about Jesus as the Messiah. And she started wondering if Jesus really could be the Messiah. So she went to her rabbi and said, why don’t we believe Jesus is the Messiah? Because what I’ve been reading really sounds like he is.

And he, his only answer was this. Tradition. It’s all about tradition. And so, yeah, she rejected that because she thought, I’m not going to base my faith on what man says or on some tradition that came out of who knows where. I’m going to base my faith on what the Bible says. Exactly.

Crystal: And so I think that it is important for us to deconstruct and take it apart because there’s things that we believe the Bible says [00:26:00] that when you actually go back and look at it, you’re like, Oh, that’s not even actually there.

Like I had this experience a few years ago reading through the book of Judges because all my head I have these stories people told me about these Judges and like kind of moralizing the stories. And when you read the stories, you’re like, oh, that part’s not there. And so you just, just to recognize, like, there’s parts that are missing that we’ve put in there.

And there’s also things that we need to understand culturally. And in context, as you read scripture, that maybe just because we’ve taught it this way for so long, doesn’t mean that it’s really that way. And so it can be uncomfortable. And people, I think, are afraid of the idea of questioning and wondering.

But I think, man, if we’re going to find the real Jesus, and if we’re going to really experience truth, You need to take that apart and look at it and examine it. And then I think it’s possible to put it back together again. Like I sure have. Yeah. I know a lot of people, I know a lot of people who have put things back together, put their faith back together and it’s just, it’s better.

It’s healthier.

Kelly: It’s beautiful. It’s been [00:27:00] purified by the Holy Spirit, by what’s really true in the Bible. One of the things I wanted to bring up too, is that people can turn their back on God And they need to deconstruct what they’ve believed about God when they get hurt. So if you have a certain view of who God is from your years of being, reading the Bible or going to church, but you haven’t developed a real clear theology of suffering, like when you suffer, when you’re pain, when you’re hurt, when you have suffered deep losses, when your heart is breaking, when disappointments have shattered your dreams.

It’s easy to hold God at arm’s length. You’re mad, and I get, I have been offended with God, and I’ve had to wrestle that out with Him. But I think the temptation sometimes is to just turn your back on God. But that is a time where you need, where we really need as a people. To find the freedom to run to God with all of our pain and wrestle it [00:28:00] out with him.

And as we do that, we suddenly realize we have deconstructed a wrong view of God. Like we thought we, and maybe we were living in a formulaic kind of view of him. Maybe we thought his love means that we’re not going to suffer. And so suffering really made us. Reconsider that. But what we discover when we wrestle it out with God is a love deeper and purer and more with us and for us than we ever could have imagined.

Crystal: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I think you’re right about that formulaic view because I think a lot of times there are churches and theologies and like ideas like, well, if we love, if we follow God, we follow God, like he’s going to keep us safe and happy and healthy and wealthy and like all these, you know, prosperity kind of gospel things.

And it’s kind of sneaky. It sneaks in other ways too. And so you just think that if I do this and I do that, then God’s going to bless me. And so when the suffering comes and you’re like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Yeah, but it’s it’s in that suffering. Yeah, I mean, I’ve been [00:29:00] through a good share of suffering in my lifetime and it was through that, that you really just develop that ability to lament with God.

Yeah, bring those broken places and those broken. feelings and just the disappointments and the hurts and just bring them to God and be like, this hurts. Yes. And that you, and you find a God who’s like, I know, like, let’s just be sad together. You know, we’ll be sad together about this. And like, and that’s like, that’s okay.

Kelly: We can lament. We can run to God. My favorite, I did a whole podcast on this. How do we walk through suffering without giving up on God? And I focused on Jeremiah, who was a world class wrestler. I love this guy so much, but God met him in his grief and he wrestled it out and re and retained, retained intimacy with God.

That was deeper, deeper than he had before. It’s so beautiful. It’s so beautiful. It is. Well, there’s something I really want you [00:30:00] to describe for us. You came out of a culture where you felt you had to earn God’s love and you had to hide your flaws. So you were always trying to be perfect. Then you finally became convinced that you were radically and intensely loved by a God who wasn’t repulsed by your brokenness and you didn’t have to hide.

Instead, he saw you as beautiful and he completely adored you. And in that process, You found freedom, and you’ve already talked about this a little bit, but let’s just talk about it a little bit more how we can find freedom in the truth and the magnitude of God’s unconditional love.

Crystal: Yeah I think we’re so quick to put.

Like human characteristics on God. So like not, not positive ones either. Like we kind of give him like the negative ones, you know, like we experience people as being disappointed in us. And so like God must be disappointed in us and you know, people can come across as harsh sometimes and so God must be harsh and we just, we tend to just [00:31:00] take those human characteristics and put them on God and we try to make God in our own image.

Kelly: Yeah.

Crystal: Instead of recognizing like, no, no, we were made like him, a little bit, right? But he’s not like us at all. And so I think the freedom that comes from recognizing I don’t need you to do anything for me, Christy. Like, you don’t have to do anything for me. Like I just want, I just want you to be with me.

Kelly: Yeah.

Crystal: Like just be with me and let me heal you. I think that’s been like the biggest thing that I’ve learned is just like, stop trying to fix it yourself. Like you can’t fix it yourself. Like, just, just be with me and let me heal you.

Kelly: And,

Crystal: you know, let me take, just take the time to really dig in, because I, I don’t like being wrong.

I don’t know if like you, like, I don’t like finding out that I’ve been wrong or that I’ve done something wrong. Or like, it’s not a comfortable feeling, but instead of just trying to brush it off or, I’ll change, I’ll change. Like, to really go, I wonder why I’m doing that. And just take the time to be, like, I wonder why.

Holy [00:32:00] Spirit, why are you kind of, why am I doing that? Like, where is that coming from? And to really look into, like, a lot of times, like, there’s just, there’s hurt, and there’s brokenness, and there’s, like, stuff going on in my own heart that he wants to heal. And when you recognize that, there is this beautiful freedom that comes.

Because you’re like, I don’t have to get this together, like, he loves me, and he wants me whole more than I want to be whole. And so he’s, he’s gonna work on that if I’ll let him. And a lot of it just comes down to me, like, letting him, like, I’ll stop, like, I’ll admit that I’m broken, and I’ll Stop trying to fix it and like, I’ll let you get in there and fix the part that’s truly broken.

And like, that’s, that’s freedom, man. Like that is no kidding. That is freedom.

Kelly: The word shalom, the peace word that is used in Hebrew literature and in the Bible actually means wholeness. It has, it conveys so much more than our impression of peace. God’s peace is supernatural and it’s like no peace we’ve ever known.

That it also just conveys. [00:33:00] Wholeness, just like all of our shattered pieces being brought together whole and healed. And that’s what Jesus is always doing within us through his spirit. Yes. I want to read 2 Corinthians 12, 9, which speaks to you know, not hiding anymore. So it’s something I just posted this week . So this first part is a quote by Susie Larson from her book closer than your next breath. And it says, “we’ll never find our father exasperated by our weakness will always find that our Abba pours his glory and his strength into those places we’d rather hide.” And that’s just what you’re talking about.

And then I posted 2 Cor 12:9 which I love so much. When I finally learned I didn’t have to hide my weaknesses or hide my brokenness, I found so much freedom and peace. And so Paul has asked the Lord to remove the thorn in his flesh, and then he writes, Each time the Lord said to me, My grace is all you [00:34:00] need.

My power works best in weakness. And then Paul responds to this amazing revelation. So now I’m glad to boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ can work through me. So it’s in these places of our brokenness where we experience the power of Christ, where we experience that love of Jesus that never lets us go, that is always loving us more than we can even imagine.

Crystal: Yeah, for sure. I love that.

 

Kelly: Well, we’re going to close with you talking to us about what you want the readers to take away from Religious Rebels, but I want you to tell the story, about a time when you learned something more about how much God loves you, and it had to do with seeing someone you wouldn’t normally have felt love for.

Crystal: Yeah, that actually started when I was still almost in the cult by meeting some of these just really difficult kids at the school that I was volunteering at.

Okay. And just every time I, every time I would meet these, , [00:35:00] just really rotten, usually middle schoolers. Like, I would just feel these just like a deep sense of love for them and just recognize that’s God. And I feel like that’s continued. But the story you’re referring to is in my book and it was, I was at Starbucks and ahead of me in line was a person who was trying very hard to look like a satanist, I think.

I mean, really black satanic symbols on their shirt and this long kind of like dreadlocky hair and lots of piercings and just very dark, very dark person. And as I was looking at them, I just felt this overwhelming love for them. It’s just like God just poured. His love into my heart and I was Oh my gosh, I, I love you. And I was just staring at them and trying not to be awkward, but also I couldn’t look away and just praying and asking God to show his love to this person , and yeah, as I went back to the car and I felt God reminded me once again, , that is how I love you.

, I look at you and I see [00:36:00] all the mess. And I think what I really enjoy about people like this is they are just so authentic, you know, most of us kind of just hide our brokenness and try to look like we’re got it together and people who are just open about this is who I am, this is how broken I am.

It’s just very it’s fun to see, but just felt like that’s who you are. You are a mess and you’re not hiding it from me. I see it. And right there is where I just absolutely adore you because you’re messy. And that makes it even more lovable. You know, it’s like, I always say like, to love somebody who is lovable takes, you know, so much love.

But, like, to genuinely love somebody who’s, completely unlovable takes just so much more love and such genuine, deep, scandalous, love. And that’s the love that God feels for us, that deep, ridiculous, for absolutely no reason. Love because

Kelly: he just does so sweet and precious and tender. And so like him that he allowed you to feel it.

And [00:37:00] that’s what we need to be rescued from our limited perspectives of God’s love. We need God to meet us in those places as we, we look to him and show us. How much he loves us. One of the things that Susie Larson said when somebody just said, what do you want people to say when you’ve died?

What do you want people to say about you? And she said, I, the main thing I want them to say is she loved God and allowed God to love her. She opened her heart to receive more and more and more and more of God’s love. And it, that’s so beautiful. And it’s the prayer Paul had for the Ephesians and Ephesians.

3, 16 through 19, where he prays that they would know the depth and width and length and height of God’s love, that they would know the mysteries of them and the magnitude of God’s unstoppable, unrivaled love. It chokes me up. I mean, it’s [00:38:00] so hard for us to comprehend.

Crystal: Yes. But I think when you capture even a piece of it, like a taste of it, it just makes you just love him even more.

Yes. You know, like you’re like, wait, you left me like that. And you just like kind of turn into a puddle and you just love them back.

Kelly: Yes, I love that. I remember once just coming back from a vacation and I had woken up in the morning, just feeling kind of bad about myself, like no good reason, just kind of feeling like I was apologizing, like in the back of my mind, apologizing.

To God that he had to use someone like me for ministry. And I kind of did live with the lie. I think the biggest lie in my life was I am disappointing God, which God has healed me of that. But I know it’s a really common lie. And, and I remember seeing a mess my dog had made on the carpet while we were on vacation.

So I got on my knees and I was, Spraying it and cleaning it now. Normally every mess from a dog that’s [00:39:00] on my carpet would be left for my husband. But on that day, I just felt like it’s dried. I can do it. And so, as I was cleaning it, I sprayed it once I scrubbed it. I suddenly felt like Jesus was right there with me scrubbing the carpet like I, my arm was moving, but I wasn’t using my muscles to move it.

And I lifted up the rag expecting to have to do a lot more scrubbing, cleaning, spraying, and the stain was completely gone. God. It was so, and God said to me, Kelly, that’s what I did for you. That’s what I did for you on the cross. I hold nothing against you. I love you. Oh

Crystal: my gosh. That’s beautiful.

Kelly: Thank you, God. I just pray for all of our listeners right now that the Lord would draw near, that as you listen to this podcast, as you spend time with him, that you would sense his love in such a powerful, tangible, very real way. [00:40:00] Now, Christy, I want you to tell us a little bit more about your book, and we’ll just close with what you expect readers to get out of the book, and then how they can find you.

Crystal: Yeah. All right. I wrote Religious Rebels because as I was coming out of the cult and I was processing all of my Christianese religious junk some of the lies. I just felt familiar in the mainstream churches that I was in.

Kelly: I was

Crystal: like, I’m, I’m feeling the same stuff here. Maybe it’s not quite as extreme, but this is similar.

And so I knew there was a lot of people out there wrestling with similar issues. similar religious baggage and, you know, Christian ease and trauma and all that stuff. And so I wrote it kind of as a as a, as a hope, I guess. So as you’re taking this apart and as you’re going, there’s gotta be more, like I’m telling you, there is more like, don’t give up, keep searching, keep looking.

And so, yeah, it is pieces of my story. They’re not necessarily in chronological order. Mixed in with stories from scripture and just thoughts and Bible verses. And so [00:41:00] it’s kind of a lot, but my favorite reviews say that it’s like talking to someone over a cup of coffee. So I like that vibe. That makes me feel happy.

I

Kelly: love it. It’s really well written.

Crystal: Thank you. So yeah, the thing I hope they take away, I think would be just the hope that maybe God isn’t who they thought he was. And yeah, in the real, in the real matter is he’s everything we’ve ever hoped for.

Like he’s not who we think he is, but he is everything we’ve ever hoped that he might be. And so I guess I want to leave people with hope. Like there’s hope, like God is real and he’s better than you can imagine. And he wants to be found.

Kelly: Yeah, that’s so good. And where can they find you, Christy?

Crystal: I’m currently most active on Threads and Substack. Substack, you can sign up for my newsletter there. I write weekly. It would be in your inbox. You could also kind of, I follow a little bit on the Substack app itself with notes and different things. I am on Instagram occasionally I post on Facebook, usually [00:42:00] with my link to the pod, the thing I just wrote on Substack,

I have an old podcast that I did for four years called Looking for the Real God, and that’s still available everywhere, also on Substack. And then my most recent podcast is Religious Rebels. Which is named after my book, and I think it’s going to probably wrap up with one more episode this year.

I don’t know if it’ll come back for season two, we’ll see.

Kelly: Okay, that’s awesome.

Her website is christylynnewood.com

Well, Christy, thank you so much for joining me today. This was fabulous.

Crystal: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

If you were encouraged in your faith today, it’d be great. If you’d help get the word out by subscribing, sharing with a friend or leaving a review, I’d love to hear from you. You can reach out through my website, kelly hall. org and pick up some free resources while you’re there. Thanks for listening to the unshakable whole podcast.