Over the years of our Christian lives, my wife and I have gone through many times of new growth. It is a normal process to grow, bloom, become dormant, and then have new growth again.
If we never had new growth, our Christian life would eventually wither and die. It is not wrong to re-think and question and have times of new interpretations and new inspirations.
We grew up in the traditional church and have many good and happy memories over the years of being involved. We were taught many things over the years, most of which we never questioned. We accepted what we were taught and considered it to be the truth. As time went by, we began to let some of the questions we had in the back of our minds come forward. Some things we had always accepted just didn’t make sense.
We’ve found that so many times in church, people just take what they are told and don’t question it. Most people feel questioning is a lack of faith or a lack of trust in the pastor. After all, didn’t the pastor go to college and get all the training necessary to understand the Bible? Doesn’t the pastor have the inside track on hearing from God?
We began questioning why one person has the right to have the authority to tell everyone else what God is saying. We read that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit and we have no need of anyone else to teach us. There were so many different views and interpretations. There were so many denominations that seemed to cause division among Christians. Yet we read we were to be one as Jesus and the Father are one. We read that everyone should have a word, a song, a praise, yet we sat in a service week after week just looking at the back of someone’s head, never getting to talk or discuss or have true fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
All of this brought us to our most recent time of dormancy and questions, which actually lasted over several years. Of course time is not something that God worries about, since a day with Him is like a thousand years. So when I say we were going through this dormant, questioning stage for nine or ten years, it was not a big thing.
Having grown up in the typical, modern day church, we had come to a place where we really questioned some of the doctrines and ways of ‘doing church’. Some things just didn’t make sense anymore, others seemed different from what we read of the believers in the New Testament.
Over the years, we continued to attend a few different churches thinking the answer was in finding the right church. After several years of that process and still having the same feelings, we realized that there was something more than finding a church.
After some time, we both started meeting people who were having the same thoughts, the same questions, and the same uneasiness. We met people at a local cafe and started talking, hearing them mention the same concerns we were going through. Many books and various websites started coming to our attention, and each were from people who were going through, or had gone through the same things we were going through.
It was amazing to us how we felt a time of new growth beginning. We are finding people who were going through the same things, and we are starting to find answers to some of our questions. We no longer feel alone, and we no longer feel guilty for the questions and feelings we are experiencing.
For us, it’s a time of new growth in the knowledge and understanding of grace. The grace we have in Christ, the freedom we have because of his grace. We no longer worry about the man-made denominations, doctrines and ways of ‘doing church’. We are free from the guilt of sin because of his grace. We are now learning to ‘be the church’, realizing we are one with Christ, and it is his spirit that lives and loves through us.
Article originally published on Faithful Bloggers ( http://www.faithfulbloggers.com/faithful-bloggers-new-growth.pdf ) on June 18, 2014.
Thanks for sharing this. I have been out of organized religion for 20 years. We always are now not looking for a building, but looking for a people who are the temple of God.
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I totally share similar experience: after two decades of doing church, awaken to Christianity as a religion, and church as an institution, is NOT the same as a personal intimate relationship with Jesus, and church as His people, Christ’s body.
I felt so lost, so disengaged, so not belong.
So I ASK, SEEK, KNOCK … crying out to the Father, holding Him accountable to His word, esp. in Phil 4:19, to put me together with other authentic Jesus lovers, with the like-minded. The Lord graciously led me to my current church, whose pastors and a group of brothers and sisters whom I fellowship with, are Jesus lovers, demonstrated by their devotions to prayers, to His Word and to seeking the Holy Spirit.
Hebrews 10:24-25
And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
I believe the Spirit is awakening His Church to do a new thing.
I wrote some of what I learn here:
http://truthsetsfree.me
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So true, we need intimate fellowship with Christ and His body, not the religious, effort-based church we have today. Thanks for posting your comment.
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Yes, Michael, this all sounds so familiar. We also had many questions, but the worst ones of all were about the way the church leadership treated people that just did not fit as a cog in their well-oiled (read – money) machine. If you wanted to “have a ministry” in that system you had to swear unquestionable allegiance to the king. And even if you didn’t feel you had a calling on your life, well you had better financially support that kingdom or you would soon be asked to leave. And worst of all, if you came into that church with a boat load of problems from your past, even problems that were caused by other church leadership, you were classified as a “high maintenance” church member and not encouraged to hang around.
Well, I often seemed to end up in one of these undesirable categories for I started out with a lot of baggage from being raised in an alcoholic, dysfunctional Catholic family that was always at war. When I finally did get saved in my early 20’s I was soon to find out that the churches I tried to fit in were also dysfunctional families with leaders that abused their authority. I say, “soon to find out,” but that is not quite the case. You see this kind of leadership along with their own dysfunctional followers fit the mold in my mind as what a “family” is. So it took me submitting to many years of abuse and Bible reading to finally figure out that THIS was NOT the kingdom of God that Jesus and the early church taught about and lived!. Finally, after almost 30 years of “trying to find the right church,” my wife and I gave up!
But this was not all bad. You see, I finally started to suspect that I was barking up the wrong tree when one Sunday during another sermon by an egotistical pastor, I heard the Lord say, “Why do you keep seeking the Living among the dead?” Woe!!! I said, “Lord! Is that how you see all this?” Then shortly after that I was sharing some of my many bad church experiences with a sister that was heavily invested in that system and she said something that I did not expect, “Michael, if you go into a yard and are trying to get to the front door and a dog always comes out from under the porch and bites you on the leg… you should soon get the idea you DON’T BELONG IN THAT YARD!!!” Then after that I was crying out to God after being rejected one more time and I was saying, “God, I DON’T FIT! i JUST DON’T FIT!” To this He replied, “YOU are not supposed to fit!”
So, that was it for my wife and I. We have not been part of a Sunday church since about 1996. And you know what? The longer I have been removed from that man-made system, the clearer the voice of the Spirit has become to me. It is amazing, but true and just like John wrote while warning the early church that there were already many anti-christs among them, “You have no need any many teach you, for you have an unction and He will lead you into all truth.” And HE HAS! Praise God that “there is only ONE Mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus Christ” and that Father has never meant for a hireling or thief and a robber to take Jesus’ place over His flock and that Jesus calls us each by name to go out and follow HIM. In Hebrews we read,
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Be not carried about with various and strange doctrines [all those conflicting pulpit sermons]. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace… We have an altar [the Holy Spirit teaching us], of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle… Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” (Hebrews 13:8-14 KJ2000)
That about says it all, doesn’t it?
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Thanks Michael. That was very interesting. It’s always encouraging to hear of others who have gone through this. I appreciate you taking the time to tell some of your story.
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