My heart went cold and my blood boiled as my jaw dropped. In a business seminar, a “Spiritual Intuitive Guide” was getting coaching on how to raise her rates, because she was only getting $5,000 for a 1-hour phone call every other week for 3 months to help “mystics access their power and find their grounding point.” Yes. People are so lost and disoriented that they pay spiritualists $833 per hour to get grounded. Meanwhile Christians will “pray about” going to a 3-day retreat to have a deeper encounter with God for $297. Something is horribly wrong with this picture. Be honest now. Were you thinking that it’s horribly wrong for someone to make $833 an hour? If so—that’s what’s horribly wrong.
A man in Boston found out that his 6-year old son was being taught about homosexuality and tried to remove him from that class. The court ruled that parents did not have the right to protect their children from teaching contrary to their religious beliefs. That was over 10 years ago. Now, a regular question upon entry into pre-school asks which gender your 4-year old prefers to identify with. Something is wrong with this picture.
Over 10,000 churches closed their doors when an estimated 1.2 million people left the church in 2015. (Don’t tell my parents, but I was one of them.) I didn’t leave the church because I lost faith—quite the opposite. As I began a deep spiritual journey, surrendering to inner healing, and developing a true relationship with my Father, I saw how irrelevant and fake “Churchianity” was. I saw my church—where I faithfully served and engaged in Bible studies, women’s ministries, worship team, and outreach—striving and rallying to “build the congregation to 10,000.” They, like tens of thousands of churches across the world, desperately tried to keep the people happy by pouring buku bucks into high tech production equipment for more lights, more sound, more cameras, more fog—more, more, more. Except not more spiritual meat.
They were stuck in the old paradigm of saying “Come ye…” when Jesus said, “Go ye…” They were preaching the gospel of salvation when Jesus preached the gospel of the kingdom. They were not accessing the power of the Holy Spirit by expressing His gifts. I was seeing more Holy Spirit outpouring singing in my car on the way to church than once I entered the doors.
The meat that was lacking was practical training in how to put kingdom principles to work in the marketplace. How do you solve a problem you can’t solve? How do you get funding for a God-inspired idea that could saves lives? How do you work with the laws of God’s universe in your business, instead of fighting them? What I heard about this in church? (…crickets) Maybe I missed the workshop, but I never once saw even something as simple as how to structure your calendar to be more productive, to accomplish the goals that would get you to your God-ordained destiny. Oh, that’s right—the church never taught us to set goals in alignment with our natural abilities, strengths, and passions. In fact, it seemed to me that the only goals worth attaining had to do with building a new nursery or funding a mission trip. I felt dissatisfied, unfed, marginalized. I realized that something was horribly wrong.
Like many of my fellow “dischurched,” I felt the shift long before I knew what it was or could describe it. With the religious spirit clinging to me, I felt guilty and alienated by my own choice to no longer spend my Sunday mornings in a place where I felt disconnected, disappointed, and even drained. I was done. And, yes, we are collectively called, “the Dones.”
In 2014 I created Spirit-Centered Business because I could no longer live my life and do my business compartmentalized from who I was and what God was calling me to do, and I kept meeting people who felt the same thing. Of course, I didn’t have the words for it at the time; I just felt that shift stirring inside me, a burning to get this message out there. I had no idea that people like Dr. Lance Wallnau, Ed Silvoso, or Os Hillman had already been teaching this. I didn’t discover them until late 2015. All I knew was that the way Christ followers did their life and vocation could no longer be separated from the way they did spirituality. In fact, the only way we were going to truly make the difference in the world (that we feel the deep calling to make) was not to do either one anymore. We need to shift into being who God created us to be, using our talents and skills to fulfill our destiny, and properly represent God in the marketplace.
Spirit-Centered Business started out teaching the science and practical application behind the principles in the Bible. There was a lot of justifying and bridge-building and sugarcoating going on trying to satisfy the offended, religious spirits I encountered. I felt like my hands were tied behind my back. My voice was stifled. (I actually got counseling for it.) I knew I was supposed to reach people who would be turned off by Christianese and offended by Jesus, which wouldn’t serve my purpose. I can now put language to it that I didn’t have then. What was going on was that I am not an evangelist sharing the gospel. I am an apostle, shifting the culture for the kingdom, so that the ground will be ready for the evangelists to come in.
Since this article was first published in December of 2016, I have learned and experienced so much more of God’s revelation of how the spirit realm works. I am honored to bring on Gil Hodges as a new partner to re-launch Spirit-Centered Business with a whole new dimension of teaching: access. We now have tools and understand how to access heavenly realms for wisdom, resources, divine connections, supernatural favor, angelic help in carrying out your mission, and to see what the purpose and destiny of your business really is, to name a few.
We will still have to deal with backlash, but now we’re prepared. News flash: the spirit of religion does not want any boat rocking—culture shifting is highly frowned upon. In my oh-so-sweet voice, with a cherubic smile dancing upon my lips I say, “Screw that.”
God is turning everything on its head. If I were doing a video right now I would be saying “Wake up.” We need to shake off the contentment of our comfortable, “don’t get involved,” lives. It is no longer acceptable to remain silent. It is no longer acceptable to drift along, being lulled to complacency by the hypnotic rhythm of our culture. The coddling and spoon-feeding warm fuzzies to pacify the spirit of religion needs to stop.
I really am here because I love you. If it offends you when I say that religion sucks, then I suggest some inner healing for it right away because the army of God needs you. You are not reading this by chance. We need to shift the way we do everything. My focus is business, so my Warrior Cry is to break off the barriers of the poverty mindset, to smash down the strongholds of lies that tell you (and me), “You’re not good enough, not smart enough, not connected enough, not funded enough…” The Kingdom of God is enough, has enough. And always will be enough. You and I are sons and daughters of the Creator of everything we could possibly want or dream of.
I am calling anyone who thought that making $833 an hour was wrong to shift. What’s actually wrong with that scenario is that we kingdom people are allowing Satan to go in and show people how to “access their power, and get grounded.” We have the solution. We can provide the Real McCoy, not the counterfeit. We need to get over our “heebie jeebies” about serving the woo-woo crowd, or the nightclub crowd, or the inner city crowd, or whatever, and just dive in. Start transferring the wealth of the wicked to the kingdom. God can trust us with that money a whole lot more than He trusts them with it. And think about this; it’s not just monetary “wealth” the Bible is referring to. The secular world has embraced the counterfeit of spiritual principles God intended for His kids. While they meditate, visualize, and cleanse their ancestral bloodlines, we hide our head in the sand, thinking these are “of the devil.” They’re not. Satan is no creator, just a thief. There’s a wealth of information and practices out there that we need to demystify and put the biblical version into practice. Which is why the time is now to learn Spirit-Centered Business strategies.
As a side note, Satan is also catering to our kids. When we step aside in our career-chasing busyness, in our (hold on, I’m going there) “not-my-job” mindset, he’s telling them what to wear, what games to play, what music to listen to, what to think. It’s not the progressive liberal media’s fault, or the political machine of government’s fault. It’s our fault. We dropped the ball by not rocking the boat and standing up for biblical values. We need to retrain to become relevant and influential in culture again. We need to get off our religious mountain and break barriers of relationships, of economics, of politics, of arts and entertainment, of media, and of education. But first, we need to conquer our own fears. We need to get over our poverty mindset, our doubt, fear, and unworthiness issues. There are people on the other side who desperately need our help.
What we need to do requires a lot of money. Thinking money is evil, or the root of evil, or whatever bad theology may be lurking around, is what has kept, and will continue to keep you and me in “barely getting by” mode. That poverty mindset comes from an orphan spirit that the church, the bride of Christ, has been conditioned to accept as normal…”Holy” even. So I ask, “What have you been tolerating? What have you settled for? I know I need to step up my game. Are you with me? We need to rise up and shift the atmosphere of the culture to the point that anyone who thinks parents shouldn’t have the right to guard their kids’ minds will think twice about voicing their opinion—not the other way around. We can no longer be silent. I’m not telling you to be an activist. I’m not telling you to leave church. The cry of my heart, my Warrior Cry, is that you would be fully and unapologetically you, and be fully and completely supported and equipped to do what only you can do as the hands and feet and heart of God on this earth.
I am calling those bold and courageous enough to stand up and be the voices of the kingdom to sharpen iron with me. We are over-qualified in the “innocent as doves” category, and woefully lacking in the “shrewd as serpents.” We need to sharpen our God-given skills and abilities so that the world will take notice of our excellence, our extraordinary giftedness in solving its problems with supernatural solutions—and pay us handsomely for the blessing of helping.
So, if you agree with me, I invite you to admit with me, that the soak in religiosity still smells a bit like pickling, and we need to do the work it takes to get totally free of it. I admire the Millennials on fire for Jesus who aren’t as jaded as we are. We need their fresh revelation, their energy, and their creativity. They need our wisdom. God is calling Fathers to Sons and Sons to Fathers. We are the Fathers of the next generation. Thank God they won’t hear us when we speak Christianese to them. We have to be authentic and straight up—relevant.
If you agree with me, I invite you to get totally free of religiosity and bring the kingdom to the world. Be uniquely you. Only then can we make the big shift and begin to see, feel, sense, know the shift God is bringing to the earth. What He is doing is unprecedented—it’s unusual; it’s going to look, sound and feel different than anything we’ve ever experienced or imagined. It’s an exciting time. It’s a time to awaken and arise. It’s your time to shift.
Bralynn’s Note:
My goal for Warrior Cry is to equip Kingdom leaders and business people with practical tools and training overlaid with spiritual access to fulfill their destiny in the marketplace. I invite you to lock arms with those in your metron, and virtually with me and other Spirit-Centered Business people. Visit www.SpiritCenteredBusiness.com for details.
Bralynn Newby is a kingdom warrior called to release voices held captive by fear, doubt and confusion. She is a co-host on Kingdom Talks, the creator of Spirit-Centered Business™, author of Planning to Profit. Bralynn is a commissioned Dokimos Project™ coach, and her apostolic gifting paired with an ability to see how to strategically put pieces into place activates influencers and launches them into their destiny. She coaches visionary influencers to package their brilliance by designing, building, and activating a lifestyle business that fulfills their God-given destiny. Connect with Bralynn at www.BralynnNewby.com.
