Byron Sarracino, from the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, answers the difficult question, “What about all the injustice and suffering?” He takes us back to where it all began, in the Garden of Eden and shows how these touch every person in the world. People everywhere do wicked things. Evil, suffering, and injustice is universal problem. People everywhere do wicked things. There is a day coming when God will judge all these things. Byron points to Jesus, who despite the wickedness of man, came to save whoever will put their trust in Him.

Byron is a Christian Native American.

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Byron Sarracino – Laguna Pueblo from New Mexico – talks about historical trauma and faith… and how we have a choice regarding how we respond to the evil things that have been done by the church and those claiming to be Christian. He had to work through this himself, asking, “Is Jesus like the people who did these things?”

Check out more important questions and answers here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcRGo7ymJ8Wwzdz6rio7nXv8

Byron Sarracino shares his own story of how he decided to believe and trust in Jesus. Byron is from the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. As a Christian Native American, he is one of many Indigenous people from different tribes and nations across North America and around the world who follow Jesus Christ.

You can listen to his full story here: https://withoutreservation.com/byron-sarracino-laguna-pueblo-part-1/

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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Is Jesus the whiteman’s God? Mark Custalow, from the Mattaponi tribe in Virginia, answers this common question and perception that Christianity is the white man’s religion. He points out the truth that Jesus is not a white man but from the Middle East where the Christian faith actually has it’s roots among a tribal people. The carriers of the Gospel to the Americas were Anglo people. But that doesn’t make Christianity is a white man’s religion.

Mark is speaking from a Christian Native American – First Nations perspective. He points out that God is the Creator of all people.

Related: Christianity is not the white man’s religion. It is not the whiteman’s gospel. Pictures of a white Jesus are inaccurate and misleading. Christianity did not have it’s beginnings in Europe. Being a Christian is not tied to or dependent on one’s ethnicity. Jesus came for the Human race. The Gospel is God’s answer for the need of every person no matter their skin color, language, or identity. Jesus came for people from every tribe and nation. He said Himself, in the Bible in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

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Transcript:

– Man, I’ve had a lot of native people in native communities tell me that they see Jesus as a white man’s God and Christianity as a white man’s religion.And to an extent I get that, I understand that. There’s been much, much travesty, much tragedy that’s been perpetuated on our native people in our native communities over the course of our history more times than we should have had to endure.

So, yeah, so the other thing that we deal with as native people is that the carriers of the gospel to us were in fact Anglo people, they were white people. And so by perception, it’s an easy logical thing to conclude, well, this is a white man’s God, it’s a white man’s religion, we have our own religion.

But in truth, that’s not the case.

Now, ultimately, this is a leap of faith. And that’s what God, our creator requires of us. He requires of us that we approach Him by faith.

And when we approach Him by faith, as He requires on His terms, this is what He tells us, that He is God, the creator of all people. He’s the creator of all cultures, not just white culture or black culture or Asian culture, but of native culture as well.

The diversity of cultures that we see in all the world were created by our God, not by mistake, but by intention. The Bible says that when God created us, He created us in His image.

When God sent a message about Himself, He sent it through a tribal people like our people, it was the Jewish people, but they were tribal just like we are. They weren’t in fact white, they were brown skin much like we are. So Christianity, although those who, the messengers who brought the gospel to us at first were of white skin, God is much bigger than any color of humanity. He’s a creator of all colors and humanity.

And the religion, it’s really not a religion, it’s a relationship… And we come to Him on His terms. And He came to make a way for us to know Him personally.

End Transcript

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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Some people say that it’s not possible to be both a Christian and Native American / First Nations. Is following Jesus tied to ethnicity? Can you be an Indigenous follower of Jesus? Mark Custalow, from the Mattaponi tribe in Virginia, addresses the question, “Can I be a Christian and Native to?”.

There is only one Creator God and He is the Creator of culture. His intent was that people would spread throughout the earth and multiply, which would inevitably lead to a diversity of cultures. Mark shares the story of what happened when people did not do as God instructed… how He created languages which would become the foundation for the cultures of the world.

Our ethnicity is given to us by God. In the bigger way we all belong to the Human race. God made us all. He is interested in people – all people – people who are different in language, culture, color, and location. God tells us that Jesus came for people from every language, tribe, and nation. So, yes, it is possible to be Native, First Nations, Indigenous, African, Asian, Hispanic, Middle-Eastern, Anglo, Hispanic, and every other background and mixture – and be a follower of Jesus.

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Transcript:

I hear a lot of people in our Native culture and our tribes, tribal communities saying, “Hey, can I be a follower of Jesus and a Native at the same time? Can I be a Christian and Native too?” And the answer is absolutely resoundingly, “Yes.”

And here’s why. Do you know that God is a creator of cultures? There’s a story in the Bible that talks about how God wanted humanity to express all of His diversity, and humankind rebelled against that. And they came and said, “God, we know a better way.” God came down and said, “No, I created you with a perfect plan, and My plan was there for there to be a diversity of cultures.” And so He forced that people couldn’t understand each other. They had different languages because of a miracle that God created, and they dispersed to different parts of the earth where God led them to have and develop these cultures that He intended in the first place.

The Bible says at the end of time, in the book of Revelation, it describes what Heaven’s going to be like. The Bible says, “Around the throne of God will be people from every nation, language, and tribe represented around the throne.” God doesn’t want us to lay down the cultures He created to become who He wants us to be. He wants those cultures to express part of the beauty of His creation.

Now, we’ll hasten to say this. We’ve taken what God created beautiful, and we’ve perverted it. We’ve diluted it. We’ve made it something different than what He intended. And so there are, in fact, parts of our culture that are challenged by the truth of the Gospel – sinful parts of our culture that the Gospel says, “That sin, that’s wrong, and we need to jettison those things.” But that’s not all of our culture.

There’s part of our culture that God created beautifully in His image to express all that He is. You and I are trophies of His grace. We’re reflections of His glory, and how He created us even culturally was intended by God to express that beauty. The key is you and I following God’s lead in determining what part of our culture is challenged by the gospel, what part of our culture expresses the diversity and the beauty that God intended us to have. And when we are there, we will reflect even greater the beauty of all that God is, and the watching world will look at us and marvel and say, “Man, I want to be part of that.” So let’s embrace that part of the culture that God gave us as a gift that He gave to us. Let’s jettison all that doesn’t please God, and let’s be the creation that He designed us to be.

End Transcript

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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It’s not uncommon to face rejection from family members and friends when someone chooses to follow Jesus. Mark Custalow, from the Mattaponi tribe in Virginia, answers the question, “Is following Jesus worth it?” He makes a strong case that it is. Mark is a Christian Native American.

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Transcript:

You know, God created us to need relationship, to need love. I know that because I observed that. I’m a student of human behavior, my own heart.

We are all created to need love and to belong. God placed us in the context of families. When we were born, you were birthed into your mother’s womb. She gave birth to you and you live and you’re in the context of a family, right? We all have different family experiences, some good, some not good.

Some families, because of their deeply held traditions and belief, believe that if you leave that faith or belief that they’ve taught you, that they kind of excommunicate you. In fact, that’s exactly what they do. They kick you out of the family and they say, “You’re dead to us. We don’t want to have anything to do with you.” And if that’s your case, if you’re saying to me today, “Hey, if I believe this Jesus, then my family is going to kick me out.” That’s a brutally hard decision because there’s a part of you that wants to belong. And you belong by birth to the family that you were birthed in and raised by.

But you’ve got to know that God is your Creator and He loves you more than all of your family combined. He holds your eternal destiny in His hands and He’s offering you an eternity in Heaven if you’ll but trust Him by faith.

So yes, believing in Jesus may cost you your family. You know there are some people that believed in Jesus and He called them to be missionaries, to go places and it costs them their lives.

Christianity doesn’t solve all your problems. It doesn’t take all your problems away. It gives you a hope in the midst of all of our problems that God is greater than our problems. We can trust Him and regardless of what happens to our body, our soul is secure for all of eternity in Jesus.

So I don’t want to deceive you into thinking that if you believe in Jesus, everything’s going to be nice and rosy for the rest of your life. There’s actually a cost to following Jesus. And that road of following Jesus may come at the cost of your family saying, “Believe in Jesus and you’re dead to us.”

I would ask you what’s more important to you, this temporary earth suit and temporary relationships or the eternal destination of your soul, abiding with the Creator God who made you in His image and wants you to live with Him for all of eternity without end. Because the alternative is in eternity and hell forever without escape, without end.

Don’t reject the love of God. He’s made a way specifically for you. And any costs we have to pay pales in comparison to the price that Jesus paid to purchase your soul.

End Transcript

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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Mark Custalow, from the Mattaponi tribe in Virginia, answers the question “Is Jesus more powerful than the spirits?” Is Jesus greater than the spirits?. These are important questions. If Jesus isn’t, then why would anyone follow Him. But if He is, what do we have to be concerned or afraid about?

Mark is a Christian Native American.

** Listen to this true story from Navajo elder, Herman Williams, as he shares how he was cursed by a medicine man, and how the curse backfired: https://withoutreservation.com/medicine-man-navajo-power-of-god/

** Listen to this true story from two-time Tribal Chairman of the Lac Orielles band of Chippewa, Gordon Thayer, as he learned first hand that Jesus is more powerful than the spirits: https://withoutreservation.com/gordon-thayer-ojibwe/

Focus: Jesus is the Creator. He has absolute power and authority over all Creation, including every spirit. Yes, spirits have power but they submit to the One who created them. The spirits use fear, impersonation, and demonstrations of supernatural power to deceive people in order to keep them from knowing and following their Creator. Instead, people pay homage and sacrifice to the created spirits rather than worship the Creator who alone deserves their honor and affection.

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Transcript:

You know, the wonderful thing about Jesus is He is God and He is all-powerful. He’s big enough and we can trust Him. He’s shown Himself to be trustworthy.

Jesus is the God-man. It’s God coming to earth and taking on human flesh. It’s God with us, God Emmanuel.

You know, in our culture, again, we have a spiritual orientation we think about. We understand spiritual realities. And you may be asking yourself, “You’re telling me much about Jesus, but is Jesus really more powerful? Is He stronger than the spirits I’ve come to understand and seen in my life? Have I got a story for you?”

The Bible says that when God came down in the form of man, Jesus, that when Jesus was beginning, immediately as He was beginning His public ministry on earth, the Bible says that Satan came and led Him into a desert. So this is a great antithesis, right? You have God in the form of His Son Jesus, and then you have Satan, the great deceiver that’s been cast out of Heaven. And so Satan is taking Jesus, the God-man, into the desert, and then he began to tempt Him. He said, “Jesus, bow and worship me, and I’ll give you everything that you see.” He began to tempt Jesus in many different ways relative to power, prestige, worship, all these things. And every time Jesus quoted back to Him the absolute truth of the Word of God, thereby defeating and putting down every attempt that Satan made to defeat Jesus the God-man.

Satan didn’t send his demons to do his bidding. He wanted to take on Jesus directly, and Jesus defeated him in the desert. But even greater than that, Jesus ultimately defeated Satan on the cross.

See Satan is responsible for our death. We belong to him because we’re sinners, and Jesus conquered Satan and death and hell in the cross. And he is a defeated enemy, and if you’re a follower of Jesus or you become a follower of Jesus, we can be set free from the clutches that Satan the deceiver has in our lives, and we can live above the fray and beyond that, all by the power of the Holy Spirit because of what Jesus made possible. I’m here to tell you today, Jesus is more powerful than all the spirits and Satan himself and all of them together, because Jesus is God. He is supreme and He is Lord.

End Transcript

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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Mark Custalow, from the Mattaponi tribe in Virginia, addresses the reality of spirits visiting and communicating with people. Dreams and visions – these are not uncommon. For many of us, personal experiences can determine or influence what we believe and trust. Is that safe? Can we trust them? What do we rely on to guide us? The Bible says that there are deceiving spirits… familiar spirits that are false. How do we know what is truth and what is deception?

Mark is a Christian Native American.

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Transcript:

I’ve had many of my native friends, I was pastoring at a particular reservation up in the northwest for a number of years. I had church members that would come to me and say, “Pastor, I had a dream last night and they would have seen or heard a loved one who has been dead for some time speaking to them.” And they would relate to me what had been spoken to them by their loved one.

I guess here’s what I would want you to know in that instance. We as native people, we certainly honor our loved ones. We honor our elders and we respect them. That’s just part of who we are. I want you to also know though that we have a sworn enemy. And the sworn enemy, his name is the devil. It’s Satan. It’s Lucifer. And Satan is sworn to yours and my destruction.

I’ve seen Satan destroy a lot of lives and he uses a lot of tools to accomplish that. One of the things that he does to defeat, destroy, discourage, dismay us is he deceives us. He uses half truths that might be partially true enough for us to believe but it’s not ultimately absolutely true.

And you may be saying, “Well, Mark, how do you know that?” Well, I know that because there is one source in this world that we’ve been given by our Creator that’s the source of absolute truth. And that’s the Bible.

Jesus said that He’s truth. The truth is actually a person. It’s not just a body of knowledge. It’s a person and it’s Jesus.

The Bible is the source of absolute truth. And here’s what I know about absolute truth. All absolute truth points to Jesus. So if you hear any spirit, anything pointing you to some means of connecting with God, your Creator, other than pointing you to Jesus, it’s deception from our sworn enemy. Because again, he wants to keep you from all of God’s love, all of God’s mercy, all of God’s grace, all of God’s blessings. And he does that by deceiving us through things that are familiar to us. And what’s more familiar to us as Native people than the elders and the loved ones that we are endeared to and love in our cultural realities?

But again, if we’re hearing voices, seeing visions, and they point to anything other than Jesus, then it’s not absolute truth. There’s only one source for absolute truth. We have to accept this by faith. And God said to us in His Word, “Jesus is truth. Jesus is the only way.” That’s ultimate spiritual truth.

End Transcript

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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Mark Custalow, a Christian from the Mattaponi tribe in Virginia, addresses the question, “We have our own ways so why would we need Jesus?” There are many differences among the religions of the world but they share a common element. Mark explains.

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Transcript:

So you know, every culture in all of human history has attempted ways to appease the God that they understand.

God created us with a God-shaped hole and a desire and a need to appease the God that we understand exists. The tragedy is that if you study world history, civilization history, mankind has thought a lot of things about God, and then it came up with ways that we had to appease the God that we came to understand and know.

You know, the Aztecs, a tribal cousin of ours to the south in Mexico, they believed in order to appease God, they went to a great extreme and they practiced human sacrifice. I mean, it’s well-documented, some of those things. So you have anything from cannibalism to human sacrifice to cutting yourselves or things that you have to do to yourself to get God’s attention and say, “Look at me, accept me. I’m good enough. I’ve done enough. I’ve paid enough.”

Every world religion is based in that type of approach to appease the God that we believe is out there somewhere as this impersonal being deity.

The good news is that God is not impersonal. He’s a very intimate, loving God. And Christianity, unlike any other man-made religion, yea, even tribal, traditional religion, Christianity is not one where you have to earn the favor of God because we could never do that. Our God is holy. He’s righteous. He’s pure. And we are none of those things. In fact, the Bible says there is nothing we could do on our best day to impress God. But in the eyes of God, our best deeds are like filthy, dirty, rotting rags. No, in order to appease the real true God, it doesn’t depend on our works. It goes back to faith and believing. For it’s by grace that we’re saved, not by works. By believing in faith, exercising the faith that the Holy Spirit gives us to believe that Jesus is who He says He is, that He is God. He died for our sins to forgive our sins, to cleanse us, to make us acceptable to a holy righteous judge, to God Himself.

So yea, so having our ways and having that been in culture for a long time, that might be a cultural reality. But God the Creator said, “Here’s my way.” Because He’s the Creator, He gets to call the shots. And we have to approach on His terms. And those are His terms.

End Transcript

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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What are we to believe about the traditional practices? Is there an exclusive way that our Creator has made for us to approach Him. Mark Custalow, a Christian Native American from the Mattoponi Tribe in Virginia, answers this important question.

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Transcript:

You know, it’s a scary thing to leave and abandon what has been familiar and taught to you since you can remember anything in life.

You know, maybe that you grew up in a native community, in a native family that have practiced traditional ways all your life, and all of a sudden you’ve been confronted with a different truth than you’ve ever known. You’ve got exposure, somebody that’s talking to you, or some piece of media that’s come across your way that’s saying that the creator God that you’ve known and acknowledged has a name, and his name is Jesus.

And you’re being asked now to understand that what you’ve had is a partial truth, the fact that there’s a creator, that’s true. But He has a name. He’s also got a prescribed way that He’s shown us that He wants us to relate to Him. And that’s found in what we know as the Bible. And it takes faith at the end of the day to believe that God is, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him.

Now, I could quote that verse, and it would be easy for you to say, well, I’ve diligently sought Him. I keep all of my traditional ways. I’ve done everything I’ve been taught to do. And it all sounds great as a religious pursuit. But at the end of the day, God the Creator said, I want all men to know Me, but then He prescribed an exclusive way in which that can happen. I didn’t prescribe that. Men didn’t describe that. God the Creator prescribed that.

He gave His Son named Jesus to die for you and me. Jesus on earth said this. He said, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. And then He said, no man comes to the Father except by Me. Those were Jesus words. Basically, he was saying the Gospel, the good news of salvation is exclusive. There are not many ways to the Creator. There is one Creator, but there’s also only one way to the Creator. And He chose the method. He chose the means. And He makes it available to all. And all we have to do is listen to the conviction of His Holy Spirit, exercise that faith He gives us to believe. And then we are truly connected with the Creator in the way that He wants us to be, that far surpasses and is a greater fulfillment of anything and everything that’s been taught to us as far as a religious pursuit.

So Jesus is the way. The way is a person. Truth is a person and it’s Jesus. And there is no other way.

If the Gospel was not true, and there were many ways to reach the one Creator, then everybody on the earth who had some type of a religious pursuit to pursue God would not end up in a real place called Hell that God created for the devil and his demons. But the Bible says that’s not true.

God, the Creator prescribed the way. Jesus is the way. And everybody has the chance to believe. And I would urge you to consider the truth of Jesus.

End Transcript

Interested in true-life stories of First Nations people from across Native North America who are following Jesus Christ without reservation? Check out The Storyteller on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLm4Y5qad3GcSgJ3xizrCxCWaA-ZO7eUdK

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