“Following Christ means taking on your cross and dying to yourself every single day and knowing that you were nothing without Him, and that the only reason you were here was so that you can know and love and follow and live in Him, which is the only way you could actually live.” - Sasha Lipskaia There’s a haunting verse in Matthew that should shake every person who calls themselves a Christian: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven... Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you.’” (Matthew 7:21-23) I never knew you. Those might be the most terrifying words in all of Scripture. Because they reveal a truth that cultural Christianity desperately wants to avoid: believing in Jesus and actually following Jesus are two completely different things. My conversation with Sasha Lipskaia brought this reality into sharp focus in a way I didn’t anticipate. Here’s a woman who was baptized at six years old in the Russian Orthodox Church. Who believed in God her entire life. Who spoke about Jesus freely. Who even incorporated Christ into her spiritual practices and coaching work. And yet for 30 years, she didn’t truly know Him. This isn’t a story about someone who rejected God and came back. This is about someone who thought they were with God all along - only to discover they’d been dancing around the truth rather than surrendering to it. The Deception of 95% Truth Sasha’s journey took her through yoga studios, energy healing modalities, goddess archetypes, and tantric practices that promised enlightenment and self-realization. She became a successful coach helping others find their “divine feminine,” teaching meditation and spiritual practices that felt deeply meaningful. And here’s what makes her story so important: she never rejected Jesus during any of it. She would talk about Christ consciousness. Reference Christian mystics. Feel moved when she heard Jesus’ name. She even went to church occasionally, read parts of the Bible, and genuinely considered herself a follower of Christ. But as she powerfully describes in our conversation: “It was 95% truth - and that’s what makes it so alluring. But there’s 5% that says ‘you are God, and the divine is you.’ And that 5% is the poison that corrupts everything else.” This is the brilliance of the enemy’s strategy. He doesn’t need to get you to reject Jesus outright. He just needs to convince you that you can follow Jesus AND follow yourself. That you can worship God AND worship your own truth. That you can submit to Christ AND maintain sovereignty over your own life. The New Age movement isn’t dangerous because it’s completely false. It’s dangerous because it takes legitimate spiritual hunger - the hunger for connection with God - and redirects it toward self-worship dressed in spiritual language. As Sasha puts it: “I thought I wanted to know God and be intimate with Him. And the enemy gave me exactly that - except it was: ‘You ARE God. And this is God and this is God.’ I was creating a theology that served me while saying I wanted to die to my ego.” The Moment Everything Changed For over a year, God had been seeding Himself visibly in Sasha’s life. She’d hear Jesus’ name in conversations and feel something stir. She’d feel protective when people spoke against Him. But she kept putting Him off. It started simply: she wanted to go to church for Easter. The door was closed. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow came - yoga class and tantra class were scheduled. She went to yoga. It started raining. She’d change and then go to church. She changed. Time for tantra class. She didn’t go. And all day, she felt this weight. Like she’d let down someone she loved. The next week was Pentecost. She was in bed, praying - not meditating this time, but genuinely praying. And her prayer had always been simple: “Show me the truth. What is the truth?” She describes what happened next with raw honesty: “I’m asking ‘what’s the truth, what’s the truth?’ And I didn’t know Scripture well enough to realize Jesus said ‘I am the truth, I am the way, I am the life.’ But I could feel Him in front of me. There was no answer - there was just Him. And I hear: ‘Go to church. Your answer is go to church.’” This time, she obeyed. The Gospel reading that day was from John 1 - the story of Nathanael under the fig tree. Jesus tells Nathanael, “I saw you under the tree,” and Nathanael responds, “You are the Son of God!” And Sasha realized: Jesus had been seeing her all along. Under the tree. In her bed. Through all her spiritual seeking. Through all her New Age practices. He saw her. But she hadn’t been seeing Him. “My whole life I was seeking Him, wanting Him, saying I believed in Him, calling His name, being in church, praying. But I did not know Him. I did not make an effort to truly know Him. I wasn’t open to receiving Him in the way He’d been knocking. I was there, but I chose not to follow Him. I chose not to receive Him.” That’s the heartbreak of cultural Christianity. That’s the danger of thinking belief is enough. What Radical Obedience Looks Like The transformation that followed was immediate and complete. Sasha didn’t gradually transition her business. She didn’t slowly phase out the New Age practices. She dropped everything. Stopped all her marketing. Stopped the energy work. Stopped the goddess teachings. Stopped identifying with any spiritual practice that wasn’t explicitly, biblically Christian. Her clients could feel the shift. Some understood. Some walked away. And she spent the next months doing what she should have been doing all along: reading the Bible cover to cover, going to church consistently, repenting daily, praying constantly, and learning what it actually means to follow Christ. Because here’s what she discovered: the devil also believes in Jesus. He was the first believer. He knows exactly who Christ is. But he doesn’t follow Him. “Make sure you don’t either,” she says. “That’s his job.” Believing isn’t enough. Believing gets you nothing if it doesn’t transform into obedience. And obedience - true biblical obedience - isn’t about checking boxes or following rules. It’s about dying to yourself daily. It’s about surrendering your will to His. It’s about loving Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength - and letting that love overflow into how you live. The Peace That Isn’t Peaceful One of the most challenging parts of our conversation was when Sasha talked about peace. In the New Age movement, peace means zen. Serenity. Calm. Ascending to a higher state where nothing bothers you. It’s the “Xanax smile” - numb to the world’s suffering, floating above it all in spiritual superiority. But Christ’s peace is radically different. “His peace is very different from worldly peace,” Sasha explains. “His peace is ‘I’m carrying my cross every day. I choose to die for you because it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’” When you truly follow Christ, you don’t become zen. You become more aware of suffering - His suffering, the world’s suffering. You feel it with Him. But you’re not crushed by it because you’re suffering WITH Him, not alone. “You are never going to be zen because you are going to feel Him suffering with the world in every moment,” she says. “But you’re not taking it on as empathy that drowns you. You’re in His compassion - suffering WITH Him, not separate from Him.” This is why following Christ will never be easy. Your life will not be full of worldly peace. You won’t ascend to some enlightened state where you know everything and nothing troubles you. Instead, you’ll know nothing. You’ll be aware of how terrible you are. Your only hope will be in Him. And every single day you’ll cry out: “God have mercy on me, a sinner.” And somehow, in that complete surrender, in that radical humility, you’ll find the greatest joy you’ve ever known. The Question for You As I talked with Sasha, I kept thinking about Mary’s response to the angel: “Let it be to me according to your word.” What if she had said “I’m not sure. I don’t know about this”? Mary’s “yes” changed history. Her obedience opened the door for God to enter humanity in the most intimate way possible. And every day, God is asking each of us for that same consent. That same surrender. That same obedience. The question isn’t whether you believe in Jesus. The demons believe in Jesus. The question is: Will you follow Him? Will you open the Bible and let His Word actually speak to you - not as quotes you can appropriate, but as living truth that judges your heart? Will you repent daily, confess your sins, and allow yourself to be transformed rather than just informed? Will you die to yourself and let Christ live through you? Will you trust that His way - even when it makes no sense, even when it costs you everything - is better than any path you could choose for yourself? Maybe you’re reading this and realizing that you’ve been where Sasha was. You believe in God. You talk about Jesus. You might even go to church. But you’ve never actually opened the Bible and let it pierce your heart. You’ve never truly repented. You’ve never surrendered your will to His. Or maybe you’re deep in New Age practices, spiritual seeking, yoga philosophy, energy work - and you feel that same hunger Sasha describes. That yearning for truth. That sense that there’s something more. Here’s what I want you to know: if you’re genuinely seeking truth, you will land on Christ. Not some version of Christ that fits your theology. Not Christ consciousness or Christ energy. But Jesus Christ - the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And He’s been waiting for you. Seeing you. Pursuing you.
