Before we begin
I lived my whole life in perfectionism, and I thought it was obedience. I never knew there was a difference. I’m not sure I knew a difference was even possible.
I was raised and taught to know God, so that’s what I gave my life to. I learned everything I could about Him — what He looked like, what He was like, how He governed the world. I went to church practically every Sunday, trying to learn more. I spent two years on a mission, preaching all the knowledge I had acquired, trying to convince anyone who would listen to believe what I believed.
I thought I was on the path to heaven. It was actually a treadmill. If I could just know enough, do enough, teach enough — then I’d finally be close to Him. Knowledge was how I earned my way.
Then, after more than forty years of trying to earn my grace with God, I found myself divorced. For the second time.
And do you know my first thought, standing in that wreckage? It wasn’t “maybe I’ve had God wrong this whole time.” It was, “If I had only learned more.” Even there, my answer was to climb back on the treadmill — because knowledge was what earned my way to heaven. Or so I’d always believed.
The understanding came slowly, not in a single moment. But it came: the way I’d been living had never been obedience at all. Forty years, and I’d missed the biggest lesson of all. Knowledge isn’t the key. The experience is. The experience is the spiritual connection with God — and the connection was never something I had to earn. It was the very thing I’d been too busy performing to receive.
— Brent
“…nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from God’s love, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:39
We begin with a map, because you are about to take a journey, and there are really only two roads. They run through the same world. They pass the same circumstances, the same losses, the same ordinary Tuesdays. The difference is not the terrain. The difference is the lens you’re looking through — and the lens decides almost everything. This is not a new idea: from Moses to the Psalms to the lips of Jesus, Scripture keeps setting two roads before us and bidding us choose the one that leads to life (Deuteronomy 30:19; Psalm 1; Matthew 7:13–14).
The Two Roads
The first road is the road home. On this road, everything belongs. Nothing essential is missing. You are already loved — not pending, not provisional, already. There is enough; in fact there is more than enough, and it isn’t running out. So you can rest, and give, and risk, because your supply doesn’t depend on you.
The second road is the road away. On this road, you are on your own. Supply is limited and the clock is running. Love must be secured, worth must be proven, your place must be defended. So you perform. You compare. You grasp and you hide. You never quite arrive.
Same world. Two lenses. And here is the thing worth sitting with: you can hold either lens up to a beautiful life or a brutal one. The road you walk is not set by your circumstances — it’s a way of reading them. Which means the road away can quietly run a life that, from the outside, looks blessed, faithful, and bright.
Pause · a moment to be honest
Where in your life do you most often feel that you’re on your own — that if you don’t hold it all together, no one will?
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How the lie takes hold
The lie doesn’t arrive all at once. It runs in a sequence — the same descent the Apostle Paul traces in Romans 1: they knew God, refused to honor Him as God, and were handed over to a darkened mind and disordered lives (Romans 1:21–25). Always the same direction, always starting in the same place:
- A wrong belief about God — that He is withholding, demanding, hard to please, keeping score.
- …leads to a wrong belief about yourself — that you are not enough, on your own, behind, unsafe.
- …leads to wrong action — earning, proving, controlling, comparing, hiding.
It always flows in that order. We usually try to fix our lives at the bottom, at the level of action — try harder, do better, sin less. But the action was only ever a symptom. Change the belief about God at the top, and the whole chain comes loose. That is what these pages are for.
Where this road leads
Down the road away, there are four mile-markers. We’ll stop at each one, in turn. They are not random — they are the exact descent that the most beautiful being in all creation followed when he decided God was holding out on him (Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28). They are the same four steps repeated in a garden, beside a tree, by people who had never lacked a thing (Genesis 3). You may find they are also the steps of your own story.
The four lies
Scarcity — there isn’t enough.
Certainty — there’s only one way, and it’s mine.
Perfectionism — no flaws allowed.
Self-Promotion & Self-Protection — me and my team first.
The good news, before we go a step further
Read the anchor verse again. Nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God. So whatever road you find yourself on, the road away is never the truth about where you stand with Him. It is only ever a lie about it — a powerful, practiced, sometimes lifelong lie. The journey ahead is not about earning your way back into a love you fell out of. You never fell out of it. It’s about learning to stop believing a lie you were handed, often by people who believed it too.
Before you move on
When you picture God looking at you right now, what is the expression on His face? Don’t write the answer you know is “correct” — name the one you actually feel.
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Before you move on
Read Romans 8:39 again, slowly. If nothing can separate you from God’s love, what one thing in your life would change if you truly believed it?
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Carry this with you
Once a day, stop and ask yourself a single question: “Right now, am I on the road home, or the road away?” Don’t fix anything. Don’t judge what you find. Just notice which road you defaulted to — and notice how often.
Nothing can separate me from the love of God.
Rooted in Scripture
Everything in this Part stands on the Word. Sit with the passages it draws from:
- Romans 8:39 — the promise the whole Part rests on: nothing in all creation can separate you from God’s love.
- Deuteronomy 30:19 — “I have set before you life and death… Therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants.”
- Psalm 1 — the two ways: the one who delights in God’s law is a tree planted by streams of water; the wicked are chaff the wind drives away.
- Matthew 7:13–14 — “Enter in by the narrow gate… How narrow is the gate, and restricted is the way that leads to life! Few are those who find it.”
- Romans 1:25 — they “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” (the keystone of vv. 21–25)
- 2 Corinthians 11:14 — “even Satan masquerades as an angel of light.” (the verse this whole program is named for)
- John 8:44 — of the devil: “there is no truth in him… for he is a liar, and the father of lies.”
- 1 Peter 5:8 — “Your adversary, the devil, walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”
- John 10:10 — “The thief only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.”
- Isaiah 14 · Ezekiel 28 · Genesis 3 — the fall behind the fall: the pride that said “I will ascend,” and the same lie first whispered in the garden.
What’s surfacing as you read isn’t meant to be carried alone. When you’re ready to talk it through, Yada is here.