Informally God
The God of Our Mistakes and 27 Summers
- Hi guys, welcome to another episode of informally God. Today I would like to pardon any background noise that you hear, but today I would like to talk about mistakes and 27 summers, the book 27 summers by Ronald Olivier. I think that's how you pronounce his last name. I recommend it, I just finished it, it's a great book. So mistakes, it's not a good idea to focus on the mistakes that we've made and the principal reason why it's not good for us to focus on the mistakes that we've made is because there is a God. And the thing to understand is that we've made a mistake but the greater thing to understand is that God has allowed the mistake, he has allowed it, he has allowed it to occur. He has allowed you to make that mistake in his infinite wisdom. He has allowed the mistake. Now, human beings, most of the time, don't even allow you to make a mistake. Either they're trying to prevent you from making one by controlling some aspect of your existence or they are setting you up, setting an example, the wrong example and setting us up to make mistakes and then judging us after we've made the mistake that they've given us an example to make. But it's important to understand that God allows mistakes, he allows the mistake exactly because he is God. And even when you have made the mistake, he is powerful enough to lord over that mistake that you've made, he's still with you. And he is victorious at the end of the day. So he has the power to turn that mistake into a victory. Now, this doesn't give us Carte Blanche. I think that's how you pronounce that word to just go out and be reckless and to do whatever, do what thou wilt because God will forgive you. Because what is not forgiven is unrepentance. But God allows mistakes, God is God. So he understands that we are lost. He understands that we are in the darkness. He understands that we know not what we do. And because he is God and because he has love, he doesn't, as opposed to human beings, he doesn't hold that against us. He understands that we do not understand the spiritual realm. He understands how we were set up in life, by parents and guardians who did not obey the guidelines that he set in terms of a nuclear family. He understands all this. And when people understand where you're coming from, they don't hold the mistakes that you make against you, especially if they say that they have love in their hearts. So just a quick, I just wanna make a quick note here that there is a reality of God. And just because you don't engage in that reality or just because you don't understand that reality or just because you don't believe in that reality doesn't mean that reality does not exist. Even when I didn't believe in God, I knew that there was something bigger out there. I made an assessment that even though I don't know, even though I've never met, even though I've never met this particular group of people who live in the wilds of Africa, does it mean that they don't exist? Just because I haven't personally experienced it, does it mean that I don't know that it exists? I always made room, sorry, I think this is going to pass. Unbelievable. But I always made room for the impossibility of all that I do not know. I always made room for the idea that just because I don't know it and just because I haven't met it and just because I haven't experienced it, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. That's the impossibility of God. There's the reality of God, and a very obvious reality of God is the nuclear family, for example. You can live a life where you have, quote unquote, two dads, or quote unquote, two moms, raising a child. What's happening there is that you live outside of a reality, it's not real reality because that's not where a family comes from. There is still always going to be the existence of God's reality, whether you believe in it, whether you agree with it, whether you were grown up to realize it or raised to realize it, there always exists God's reality. And for some reason or another, we as human beings, most of the time, have been raised to operate in a reality that has nothing to do with God. It's out of our minds, it's a reality that doesn't exist. And this is why you see a lot of suffering. So, two, like I said, a reason why God doesn't hold, he doesn't hold it against us, that which we do not understand, that which we do not know. He tries to get our attention, and he tries to do that through our mistakes, through the allowance of our mistakes. 27 summers, I recommend it. I don't want to talk so much about it, but I really love this book because this book is about Angola prison in the state of Louisiana, which I think has, like, as a state, has the highest incarceration rate in the United States, I think, and Angola, I think has had one of the most dangerous and notorious reputations of a prison in the United States. It rests on a former slave plantation, and what's very interesting, or for lack of a better word, what's noteworthy about this particular prison is that a lot of the men who are serving time or who were serving time in this prison got life sentences and received life sentences when they were just 15, 16 years old. They got life sentences without the possibility of parole as juveniles. And Ronald de Livier was one of these juveniles. I think he was a found guilty of second degree murder that he did commit. At the age of 16, and he went on to serve 27 years in prison, and 27 summers is about his road back to Christ and his finding of God pretty early on in his prison time, and I just love it. I love it because it's an accurate representation of how God works. It's an accurate representation of the kind of kooky manner in which God operates to us human beings. It's an accurate representation of what happens in God. It's not these extremes of, it's these happy tambourine clapping experiences, nor is it the other extreme of rotting in a jail cell for the rest of your life. It's the discernment of God. It represents and portrays the discernment of God. And the fact that, well, I'll get to that in a second, about some of the things, the standout things that I wanted to note about 27 summers. But Ronald de Livier served 27 years in Angola prison, and he eventually came out and became a director of chaplains at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, I think at this particular penitentiary. So I recommend it. Like I said, I recommend 27 summers. What's interesting is that I found this book on a book list of black authors. I had actually heard of Angola prison, and I was introduced to Angola prison through Atavus magazine, which does a lot of great long-form journalism pieces. In this particular long-form journalism piece that I read was about a corrupt cop of New Orleans. He had served as a cop in New Orleans for a long period of time, and he was very corrupt. And he ended up, I think the death sentence was overturned, but he became a cop turned death row inmate because he ordered a hit. One of the many things that he did was he ended up ordering a hit out on a civilian. And so this is how I came into knowledge of Angola prison. And this came via this article, but also through something called the Visiting Room Project, which I recommend that you visit. It's called the Visiting Room Project. I think it's .org. And it's a lot of interviews. On the website, very short interviews with a lot of the men who are serving time at Angola. And one of the standout interviews that The Atavus covered was Bernard Jaluc. He was actually serving time as a wrongfully convicted person at Angola. And it's interesting that I didn't come across 27 summers in Ronald de Livier serving time at Angola prison through this magazine, but through another means altogether. But I thought it was kind of cool that it was a reminder of what I had already been introduced to. And I'm glad that I took a leap of faith, no pun intended and read it, because I usually don't read a book reviewer. And so I read a lot, but I usually focus on independent books, books that are published by self-published authors and independent presses, so small independent presses. So some takeaways from 27 summers is that God is not as, he doesn't really care about how comfortable we are, because comfort doesn't lead us to sanctification. Comfort doesn't lead us to him. So God is not, as Olivia really greatly points out, he's not as concerned about our comfort as he is concerned in reshaping us in the image of Christ. And that can be a very painful experience, but not necessarily because of anything that God is doing, but the hell that we have to pass through in order to get to God at the end of the tunnel, the light at the end of the tunnel that we have been brought away from. Another takeaway is that, well, I just wanna say also, more on the note that 27 summers represents a kind of like this insane walk with God. Things don't really make sense to us as human beings when we're going through our walk with God, they make perfect sense to God, but this is why it involves so much, including the suspension of our expectations, the destroying of our expectations and our ideas and our own intellect and our own mind, the things that must be destroyed in order to come into a higher mind of God. And so it makes total sense, that someone like Olivier would have to find God in prison. He would have to go to the most violent, dangerous place in the world, and he would have to go to the most violent, dangerous place to find God. He, the best place to become a pastor, is in prison. Because just like our brother, Jesus, we will have to descend into hell. And to be resurrected in spirit, in the spirit of God, we will have to die spiritually, a spiritual death in order to be resurrected in the spirit of God so that we may serve as an example to our fellow brothers and sisters. So another great takeaway from 27 summers is I really love the fact that Olivier keeps repeating in the text. He does it through chapter headings and he does it in the text itself. He repeats over and over and over again, my fate is not in the hands of human beings. My fate is not in the hands of human beings, it rests in the hands of God. And this is something that's noteworthy because it may seem as if, I know I've experienced this, where it seems as if God just has us out here, where we seem, I've said to God on many occasions, it seems like I'm out here being subject to the will of human beings. And this is like, it feels like hell because it feels like you've forsaken me. It feels like I'm in this space where it seems like my life will get better if only this human being made this decision about my life to maybe give me this or give me that. And like I said, I'm really grateful for this constant repetition, because this trains us to constantly keep our eyes on God, even when we don't really feel as if we're hearing him, that our fate at the end of the day does not rest in the hands of human beings. I don't care what the situation may look like in the physical. Another takeaway, really, really important takeaway. I absolutely loved that Olivier are made a disambiguation from God's favor and reward. There will come a time in your walk with God where it seems as if you're being showered with lots and lots of things. So we'll see as if you are coming into great rewards of God. And this is very dangerous in your walk with God and it's something that you're gonna have to overcome too. And it's sometimes, you know, when it seems as if we're being rewarded by God, if we identify with this idea of being rewarded by God, then we're going to identify with this idea of being punished by God. And God is not a reward system. He's not a punishment system. He's not a barter system. He surpasses our understanding. And so you will get to a point in your journey with God where you will move past labels. You will move past your particular idea of right and wrong because it doesn't exist in the way that you think it does in God. But you will come to a point where you would just realize that it's all just experiences at the end of the day. You will have experiences where maybe it seems as if you're being rewarded. But like I said, you will move past a point where you will label lists as a reward or as a punishment. You will move past that. You will just come into this idea that you're having different kinds of experiences that are all for preparation at the end of the day for the next season, that are all made for your sanctification at the end of the day. These are experiences on your resume to God. Your objective is not another job. Your objective is not another thing in the material world. Your objective is your sanctification. It's your salvation. And so every experience that you have, I don't care if you're sitting on a sidewalk with sores all over your body, like Job, or whether you're inheriting the promised land, they're all just the same kind of experience at the end of the day designed to do the same thing. And like I said, I'm really grateful that he disambiguated this. There's a part in the book where he's just like, it would seem as if he's being showered with all these different things are being moved for him in these really miraculous kinds of ways. And it seems like God is giving him this reward and this reward, but the thing that's very important to understand as well is that this is happening while he still has to serve a 27-year prison sentence. So this is a very accurate kind of example of what happens in God. We will just have experiences, experiences that are designed, like I said, for our sanctification, not so that we can get attached again to these worldly ideas of bad and good and right and wrong, and reward and punishment. God will give us all different kinds of experiences. The next takeaway is, it's just like a general idea of how God works. Through the way that we were raised by our parents who did the best that they could do, but it still wasn't godly, nine times out of 10. And this is why we have to forgive them because they gave us an example that was not of God. Your mom may have been a great single mom and she may have done the best that she could, but that's still not God's example. That's still not the guideline that he set for his children. And so we forgive our parents for giving us a wrong type of example to follow in our lives, to think that certain things are right when they are not right, to think that certain things are something to aspire to when they really are not. Hell, through our parents and through our guardians, is the spirit of the devil that has set up shop within our bodies. And this spirit that has set up shop within our bodies is influencing us and has influenced us over the course of our lives to think and feel and behave in ways that are for pretty much self-destruction. They are set up to destroy us and they are ungodly ways. They are ways that are against God. So think about it like, you know, this is why it's called the Valley of the Shadow of Death that in, you know, God is, you know, we were born with the light of God, I believe, but we traveled away from that light through parents, through the world, who had, you know, a demonic understanding of life, of God's creation. And so we were brought away from that light and now we are returning back to that light. But with the added bonus of having to walk past Satan who we have identified with the spirit that we have identified with. We have identified with the anger of Satan, with the fear of Satan. We have taken on 2001 different types of personalities and identities of Satan. And so in order to, you know, it's like a long corridor, you know, filled with one room, you know, we can see the light at the tunnel, at the end of the tunnel, which is God. But there's that one room in that door on the right-hand side that we're gonna have to pass in order to get to God now. And that room, you know, locked in there in Satan and we're gonna have to walk past him. We have identified with him, but the more that we walk in this valley, you know, God will give us the light of his sight, you know, so that we can finally see the devil for the trickster that he is and the deceiver that he is. Before, he was one in the same with us. We identified with the devil, you know, he, you know, made us love gossiping. He made us love murdering. He made us love revenge. He made us love all of these things that are not of God. And so now God is giving us his sight to go through the valley so that we're walking, but we're walking now and we can see, we can see the devil for the liar that he is. And he's going to raise hell. And that's why it seems as if we're suffering sometimes because, you know, on this walk of sanctification, we're gonna have to descend into hell. We're gonna have to overcome that spirit that is evil, that is within us, that is also within others. And we're gonna have to die to that spirit. And that punishment that we feel is not actually coming from God. He is actually giving us the sight to see the one who actually gives us the punishment. And so we're gonna have to walk past him. We're gonna have to disidentify with him. We're gonna have to separate ourselves from him so that we can see that we are really not the devil. As we come closer to God, we see who our real father is. And even in this hell that we are in, you know, like Olivia here, we will thrive and we will begin to rejoice even in hell because there is a God and he loves us. And the last point that I wanna make is it's along the lines of an episode that I made not too long ago. And just a note that sometimes God's desires for us may seem very dangerous. They may seem very nonsensical. We may say yes to his desire, but then like Jesus be swallowed by tons and tons and tons of fear that God has forsaken us. God may ask us to do something and then it seems as if he leaves us there. Once we say yes, it's almost like he disappears. And it's like, as Jesus said, why have you forsaken me? Where are you? And not to fear, he has not, he is with us always. So those are the big takeaways from 27 summers, the biggest ones for me anyway. It's, it's, it's, I just love this book because like I said, it presents an accurate demonstration of God, you know, how can someone, you know, talk about the greatness of God while being locked up in a prison for 27 years, you know, that's just, that's just the miracle of God that is just, that's just the point. He is so great, you know, that you can be locked up in the worst positions ever and still rejoice and cry over how gorgeous he is, how beautiful he is. God allowed this man to make a mistake. He allowed it. His home, you know, like many of us was broken. It, you know, was fatherless and, you know, the nuclear family is not intact. And when children come from, you know, this kind of messiness and disorder, you know, so too, their mind becomes messy and disordered. And, you know, we live from that spirit. We live from that messiness and that disorderliness that guides us into the wrong situations constantly through our lives so that we're living, you know, and finding ourselves in a lot of different positions like that we really shouldn't be in because there's still that reality of God that exists parallel, you know, we're out of it. We're out of that reality, but we can get back on track. I don't wanna say too much about the prophecy, but amen to the Angola Exodus. That was just amazing. Some of God's, you know, most prized possessions are in prison. Some of God's most prized possessions, His jewels of gold and silver are on the street, are homeless, are in the darkest corners that you would never think to look because that's just how amazing God is and that's just how unexpected He is. And this is what, you know, must be destroyed in terms of our own ideas of how things are and how they work. So go get 27 summers. I highly recommend it. It's called 27 summers, my journey to freedom, forgiveness and redemption during my time in Angola prison by Ronald Olivier. Go visit the visiting roomproject.org. I believe Bernard Jaluc has since been exonerated and cleared like he is no longer at Angola, you know, sign up Angola has actually, I think it's like an award winning magazine. Like they, they produce, it's like award winning. It's won awards and everything like that because it's so good. They produce a magazine called the Angola Light or something like that, Angolite, you know, get a subscription for that. You know, visit Adivist magazine, you know, they cover some, you know, some, they have some, you know, really great pieces. I'm a big fan of long form journalism. And on that note, I will talk to you guys in another episode of informally God soon. Thanks for listening.