Keeping Christ

By Wylene Benson

Keeping Christ is an invitation to apply the perfect and influential life of Christ to our own lives through entertaining and simple stories, insights and exercises. Just as Jesus taught in parables to inspire people to come to their own understanding of the eternal truths of God, Wylene Benson uses the highly effective method of storytelling to

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ascend with Wylene, LLC
• Release date: Mar 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798986831275

Wylene Benson

Wylene is a 2-time best selling author and is currently writing her fourth book. She served for two years as the facilitator of a life skills course within the jail system inspiring countless numbers to life-altering change. Wylene is a Master Breakthrough Coach and is extremely gifted in hearing the message behind the words to get at the root of the problem, empowering individuals who choose to align their lives with solid Christian principles and the highest Truth, to find and magnify the passion within their own heart's desires. Wylene specializes in guiding people to finding their life's purpose and following a step-by-step system for the simplest and most efficient shortcut to achievement and fulfillment.

Book preview

The Surprising Lesson I

Learned from Cooked Chicken

This is something that happened probably eight or nine years ago.

It was with one of my daughter’s boyfriends. He was over at our house. I came home from work, to find him cooking a piece of chicken on the stove in a pan. The chicken was super thick.

You know what I’m talking about...there are some breasts that look like turkey breasts. He was cooking it in some oil with some salt and pepper, which is totally fine.

I always encourage anybody that’s at my house to make themselves at home. So that was totally acceptable for him to be cooking. He had gotten the chicken out of the freezer and started cooking it before it was completely thawed. He had started the process before I got home. When I arrived, the outside of the chicken was overcooked, a thick tough crust. The inside was completely raw. Yet there he was standing at the stove, turning it and trying to act like he knew what he was doing.

I took one look at it and knew it was never going to work. So without saying anything, I took another piece of chicken, thawed it out in the microwave, cut it in half so it was thinner and so it laid flat like a butterfly. I took his sad-looking piece of chicken out of the pan and I said, ‘try this.’ He looked at me and he said with the wretchedness of guilt in his voice, ‘I’m so sorry for wasting that chicken, you’re going to have to throw it away now.’ He looked really upset, because he thought he had wasted this chicken. And I said, ‘oh, it’s no big deal. I can still use it. I’ll cut it up and fry it and we’ll put it in some chicken soup or something. No big deal.’

At that moment, he totally surprised me. He grabbed me and pulled me into a really tight hug and he started crying. He said, ‘thank you.’ Come to find out, it’s not okay to waste food at his house. If he had done something like that at his house, there would’ve been some sort of punishment. So for me to say, ‘that’s no big deal. I can do something with that’, was a whole new experience for him. He was so grateful. We call it the Chicken Incident. It always brings tears to my eyes. It was a very memorable moment of forgiveness that he needed. More than the chicken not being wasted, he really needed to be forgiven, even though the mistake was no big deal. For me, there was no forgiveness needed, because I could still use the chicken.

I had the skill to be able to use that chicken in another way. The only reason that there was a problem was because he was inadequate. He didn’t have the culinary skill that I’ve developed over the many, many years of practice. So he felt like he had made a huge mistake and he needed forgiveness.

I wanted to start out with that story to illustrate the principle that I want to share with you today. I got up this morning and I was feeling very in need of forgiveness. I was feeling shame. I was feeling guilt. It was because of a couple things that I noticed when I sat down at my desk this morning.

I noticed that my inspired shortcut from yesterday (you’ll hear more about inspired shortcuts in later chapters) was to create the training series for my clients in my One Will Creation course. I had written that down. Then I got busy throughout the day and somehow in my mind, my inspired shortcut was to create a blog post. I never, for whatever reason, came back and looked at my list. So I sat down this morning, and I thought, ‘oh my gosh, I did the wrong inspired shortcut. I didn’t even do the right thing that God had given me.’

Obviously God’s will was for me to make that post yesterday and to get started on these Facebook live videos about Keeping Christ in the holidays. That was my true inspired shortcut. God just kept me away from my office so I couldn’t look at my list and and be focused on the wrong thing. But I felt a lot of guilt and shame for not following through with the inspired shortcut that He gave me yesterday morning. The other thought was that I said something to my daughter yesterday, kind of off the cuff. She was headed out the door and I just said it. She left and I found out later that she had called my other daughter and she was upset about it. The worst part was that she didn’t feel confident to talk to me about it. So I was feeling some guilt and shame about that, too.

Because of those two things, I was feeling in need of forgiveness. I know as we go through the holidays, there are going to be times when we have great plans, but we don’t get them done. Or we say something just because we’re in a hurry, and then later we can look at that and feel so much guilt and shame.

I want to go back to that story that I just told you. God can use anything. He has very good culinary skills. He can take anything, no matter how charred or dry it looks to me. He can take that and make some really good soup out of it. He can do something great, He can bring all things together and make all things work together for good.

Just like when my daughter’s boyfriend thought that he needed forgiveness, but there really wasn’t anything to forgive because there was no problem, nothing had been lost. It’s the same thing with God and us. God can take whatever was created, and He can make all things work together for good. So the time that I put into creating that blog post and the time that I didn’t put into creating the training video, He can take all of that and use it for good. So when we make mistakes, there is really nothing to forgive.

The message that I hope you’ll take from this is that we are going to make mistakes and that we can be forgiven. Just remember that even if we get off track and we feel like we need to be forgiven, there really is nothing to forgive because God can use all these things for good. All that’s required is we turn to Him. We look to Him because the scripture says, ‘all things work together for good to them who love God.’ Romans 8:28. So if you are turning to Him and you are loving Him, then He can make all things work together for good.

I wanted to do a short exercise with you. This is what I did to get myself out of that low vibration energy of feeling shame and guilt. I searched online for binaural beats. I’ve learned that binaural beats music connects your brain and your body through the spine, As my brain was telling me that I had done something wrong, and my body was responding to this inaccurate idea that I needed forgiveness, I felt guilt and shame. So my brain and my body were believing and reacting to that with the feelings of shame and guilt. But as I reconnected my brain and my body to what reality is according to God’s truth, then that music helped me to come back to the reality of what God’s truth is, that He can take all things and use them for good, and all we have to do is look to Him.

Today’s Exercise

I invite you to search for some binaural beats, turn the volume very low, almost to where you cannot even hear it with your physical ears. Then close your eyes. Take a deep breath and allow yourself to go to a moment, whether today, yesterday, this week, whatever comes to you. Just allow the moment to come to you where you felt like you needed some forgiveness, where maybe you felt some guilt and shame. Allow yourself to go to that moment. Accept it. Receive it. Know that it happened. And then as this music is playing, really focus on the music and nothing else, just the music. And allow the music to reconnect your brain and your body, connecting your brain and your body to God and his highest truth. Know that all things work together for good, for those who love the Lord, for those who look to Him for guidance and for forgiveness, which Christ has already died for us to receive forgiveness. So all is already forgiven. We are already restored. And God is smart enough, He has enough experience, He has the ability to orchestrate all things for good no matter how far off our path we get...

No matter how far away we get from the guidance that God is giving us. Think of the most depraved person who has left the path of light. If that person will turn to God, they will be immediately received back and all things will work together for good. Nothing is lost.

As you are listening to the music you chose, I want to finish with some new truths that I was able to receive for myself. I invite you to allow new truths to come to you as well.

These are the ones that came to me and you are welcome to them:

I remain in the light.

I look to God in all things.

All my actions are blessed and multiplied.

I renew my commitment to God to give all to Him, that all things may be used for good.

Meditate on these things throughout the day, and you’ll find that you are keeping Christ all day long.

Learning to Seek God’s Truth Over Earthly Approval

Today in my Daily GPS, the word ‘identity’ came to me, and I realized that there is a lot of pressure that we put on ourselves because we want to be seen in a certain way. For example, I am a master pie maker and have been making pies since I was nine. I have been constantly coming up with new recipes and trying out new ideas, tricks, tweaks, until I have mastered it. That is a way I used to introduce myself. I would tell people I was a master pie maker, and everybody would be like, ‘wow, that’s cool.

Pie making is kind of a lost art. A lot of people don’t make their pies anymore. There are restaurants and stores where people buy their holiday pies. I’ve had people come to me and ask me if I would teach them how to make pies for the holidays. So that was important to me to be the master pie maker. In a social setting that’s how I used to introduce myself. It would spark a conversation because there aren’t many of us still around. It would be a way that people could get to know me that would be memorable to them.

A few years ago, probably, I don’t know, like five or six years ago, I had a pie experience I will never forget. I host an annual event that I call Pie Night. Actually, I think a lot of people do pie nights now, but I was the first person I ever knew who did Pie Night. It’s the night before Thanksgiving. We have pie. I make other food, too. We have chili and nonThanksgiving foods. We limit it to just a few close friends. When I started doing this, the response was, ‘what a brilliant idea!’ I started doing it because pie was really important to me. And at the end of Thanksgiving dinner, when you’ve stuffed yourself, the pie doesn’t look that good anymore. When we started doing Pie Night on Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving, we did it so that we could enjoy pie. I’d make about eight different kinds of pie. We would enjoy the pie and a lot of good friendship and fun, everyone enjoying being together.

Then, on Thanksgiving day, we would get together with family and have Thanksgiving dinner. And it was okay if we didn’t want to gobble up the pie on Thanksgiving Day, because we’d already had our fill the night before. One year, about four or five years ago, my husband and I and several of our friends were on a diet. It was a special food plan that was healthy eating. It didn’t include sugar, dairy or gluten. So all three of those things were off the table. And if you like pie and you make pie, you know, pies are made with flour, and a lot of the cream pies are made with milk, Of course, they all have lots of sugar. So here is the dilemma, what are we going to do because we have to have Pie Night? I took it on myself to figure this out. I told myself, okay, I’m a master pie maker. I can do this. I can look up some recipes and I can make gluten-free pies. I can make sugar-free pies or low-sugar pies. I can do this. But that pie night was the biggest disaster. I still look back on it with horror.

I don’t take shame on myself anymore like I used to, but it took me about a year to get over it, because I’m a master pie maker. My pies are amazing and people rave about them. In fact, one of the guys that we invited loves pecan pie. I made pecan pie and it was awesome. He called me up the next day. He was at his sister’s house having Thanksgiving dinner, and he called me to say, ‘I’m mad at you, I hate you.’ I was shocked. ‘What? Why?’ He said, ‘you showed me what pecan pie is supposed to taste like and I’m here at my sister’s house, and pecan pie is my favorite. I can’t eat it. I can’t eat it!’ He said ‘this pie is like a mere shadow of the pie you made last night.’ We laughed about it. But I really had ruined pecan pie for life for him if it wasn’t made by me.

That is the difference, when you know how to make a pie, and it’s good. It’s like the difference between a culinary masterpiece and cardboard with a bunch of sugar in it. So anyway, when I took it upon myself to be the master pie maker of the gluten-free, the low-sugar, the low-fat pies with no shortening, no gluten, no flour, some of them were edible. I remember thinking, ‘how in the heck could somebody even put this recipe on the internet with a clear conscience? This is just ridiculous.’ Everyone was nice, but I’ve never been so embarrassed to be the host of a dinner party. It took me about a year to get over that because I had identified myself as a master pie maker and somebody who makes amazing pies.

After that event at my house with special friends, it was the hugest letdown. All of us agreed, we are never doing that again. If you’re going to eat pie, you eat pie, and it’s got gluten in it, dairy in it, and sugar in it. If you choose not to participate, that’s fine, but we’re gonna make it that way. We got over it, we got through it, and I’m back to making good pies. I also learned in that experience that if I identify myself as something that is associated with my accolades, with my accomplishments, then there can be a situation where it could be judged as not good. There could be a situation where I can judge myself and feel that other people are judging me too.

When we associate our identity with something on earth that is a product of our accolades and accomplishments, then because it is earthly, it is something that can be taken away. It’s not permanent. Somebody else might be able to judge that you’re not as good as you think you are. This is a way that we see ourselves as separate with a separate identity based on accolades. Another way we separate ourselves from others is in the way that we look, in the way that we present ourselves physically with the clothes that we wear and the makeup that we put on and the hair