Looking for the Real God

Christy wraps up four years, nine seasons, and 170 episodes by inviting her listeners to watch for a new podcast coming to podcast apps and YouTube in January 2024. Until then you can find Christy on: Substack, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, or her website: www.christylynnewood.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, vi...

Christy shares her frustrations with yet another public Christian leader being accused of sexual and spiritual abuse. She talks about how as our evangelical world falls apart, people's faith is left in ashes. Christy talks about the new Hope Retreats that she is starting to host, and shares things she was thinking about during her own quiet reflecting during the recent retreat. She rants about the...

In today's episode Christy leads us into a uncomfortable examination of our own hearts. Following up last week's episode on social media versus real life, Christy explores our desire to be right, have an opinion, and judge others as wrong. Sometimes we even judge God as being wrong when he doesn't line up with our opinions. Reading from Ezekiel 33 and Ephesians 4, Christy encourages herself and he...

Christy contemplates her own experience stepping back from social media the past few months. She shares how she has been intentionally living her real life and thinking about the things and people in it rather than spending spare moments creating content intended to make people like and comment. She has noticed more peace, less fear and insecurity, and more contentment since stepping back. Christy...

Christy digs into the difference between fear and worry or anxiety. She takes a look at the many ways we project fear into our future through worry, or choose to fear things that are different rather than learn more about them and get to know people who are not like us. Christy encourages her listeners to live in the present moment with God, remind themselves of truth, and be bold to explore diffe...

Christy pushes back at the moralistic focus that seems to be creeping into segments of evangelical America. She reminds her listeners that rules, laws, and getting people to be "like us" will never be enough to connect people with God. We don't need outward goodness, we need a heart transplant that only Jesus can give us through an encounter with Him. This is a public episode. If you would like to...

As Christy continues talking about American evangelical church culture, she shares a short parable from Matthew 21:28-32. Christy talks about the difference between following the rules and following Jesus. She ponders her own once pharisaical heart and wonders if--like the Pharisees--modern church people might be missing Jesus by focusing on the rules. Blog posts referenced: Confessions of a Forme...

Christy continues her series on the mess within our modern church by retelling one of Jesus' parables from Matthew chapter 13. The familiar story of the wheat and the weeds, or the wheat and the tares, becomes fresh and new as Christy explores the type of weeds that Jesus was talking about. What do these weeds have to do with the junk that seems to continually happen in church or the bad leaders w...

Welcome back! Christy starts Season 9 by talking about what she calls the "megachurch mentality" and relating it to the story of the Tower of Babel. As Christy breaks down the story of Babel she ties it together with what happened to the early church at Pentecost. Both stories involve a group of people gathering together with one mind. Both have a point in time when there are a variety of language...

Christy contemplates the goal of Bill Gothard's IBLP cult as expressed on Shiny Happy People: world domination. She remembers feeling like that was the goal back in the day--to take over the world one person, church, and city at a time--so that everyone could experience God's blessings and personal success. Now she is concerned that perhaps they succeeded more than she ever realized. Fundamental i...

Christy connects some dots between the teachings of Bill Gothard, founder of IBLP--the Christian cult exposed on Amazon's new documentary Shiny Happy People and Evangelical Christianity. Gothard's teachings on authority (power), obedience (oppression and suppression) and gossip (truth telling) were pretty extreme. But have those teachings trickled into mainstream evangelical Christianity? Or are t...

Christy talks about the new documentary series out on Amazon Prime called Shiny Happy People. The series exposes the cult she grew up in (IBLP) along with its leader, Bill Gothard. The series was harder to watch then Christy thought it would be. It brought up feelings and memories that she wasn't expecting. But Christy is also grateful that the truth is being exposed. Gothard's teachings have infi...

On Pentecost Sunday, Christy explores the Holy Spirit. She wonders why He gets less attention than the other members of the Trinity and is often either ignored or manipulated. Christy reads pieces of her new book, Religious Rebels, coming out June 15th and shares the ways she has encountered the Holy Spirit over the years and just begun to recognize Him. Christy also shares parts of an article tha...

This episode was originally planned for Mother's Day, but in the uploading process, Christy accidentally uploaded the wrong audio. So we are trying again this week. Knowing we have a mothering God isn't just something we need on mother's day. It's something we need every day! Christy acknowledges the pain that many people feel on Mother's Day from loss, heartache, disappointment, and frustration b...

As Christy prepares to launch her book, Religious Rebels, she is thinking about the things we might need to rebel against these days. Growing up. rebellion was "as the sin of witchcraft" and highly discouraged and/or condemned. But when you squash rebellion, you also squash questions, exploration, and people seeking for truth. Christy contemplates the ways Christian industries like the music indus...

Christy comments on a podcast episode she listened to with Russell Moore and David Platt. As much as she appreciates David Platt's heart for people to be genuine Christians and live lives that please God, she's always felt hesitant about his approach.  It is so easy for us as humans to get caught up in religion--in doing things for God, or to please God, or to get something from God. We cannot do...

Christy explores what can happen when we don't actively reject lies we once believed. During her cult days, Christy taught children's seminars that coincided with Bill Gothard's Basic Seminars for adults. While unboxing some old memory albums, Christy realized that the church she recently attended for the last five years was the same church that hosted Gothard's seminar in 2000. After doing some d...

Since Christy is on vacation, she is posting some of her favorite episodes over the years from the Easter season.  Christy takes time to ponder her love for Jesus and her awe of His death and resurrection. With passion and emotion Christy invites her listeners to lay aside their ideas of God and look at the person of Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh. She celebrates the core of historical ortho...

Since Christy is on vacation, she is posting some of her favorite episodes over the years from the Easter season.  Christy looks at the last Passover Jesus celebrated with His disciples. Jesus did not fit the Jews' idea of the Messiah even though the entire Passover meal pointed to Him. Where as humans seek for money, power, and fame, Jesus sought humility, obscurity, poverty, and servanthood. He...

Christy explores the reasons we humans seem to be so quick to fall for false teaching, false prophets, and cults. This world is broken and we feel it. False teachers and cults often promise a short cut to fix the brokenness. They offer identity and purpose. They promise a sense of control. But all the offers and promises are based on lies and can't really satisfy. Christy encourages her listeners...

Christy talks her listeners through a list of things that make her ears perk up and her sixth cult-detecting-sense go off. She then expresses concern over the NAR and the Passion "translation" of the Bible and shares a new book she is reading called Counterfeit Kingdom.  Sometimes God can use things because they have a shard of truth in them, but it doesn't mean that the whole organization, church...

In this brief episode, Christy introduces her book, Religious Rebels, and reads the introduction. She shares how the publishing process is going and how excited she is for her listeners to get the book in their hands. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit christylynnewood.substack.com

Christy contemplates the brokenness that brought many of us to the place of deconstructing our faith in the first place. Our world is filled with pain, sadness, heartache, loss, and more. How do we reconcile that reality with the belief in a good and loving God?  What if the brokenness is actually evidence for God rather than evidence against his existence? Could the frustration we feel be because...

As we reconstruct our faith, we need a foundation to build it upon. In our current Christian culture there are often two views of what to do with the Bible. one side thinks that any doubts or questions are wrong and the other side wants to reject the Bible completely. Christy thinks that we need to take the time to recognize the Bible as an ancient text written in a culture far different from ours...

Christy begins a series on reconstructing our faith by talking about the recent move of God at Asbury University along with the other Universities where the awakening has spread. Christy knows that we need to have a good reason before choosing to reconstruct our faith. It has to be a bigger and better reason than theology or religion. The reason Christy reconstructed her faith more than once over...