Church

In the fall of 2008 my perception of church changed.  It was really weird because I had always loved going to church, and Sunday's were my favorite day of the week, but all of a sudden I found myself hating church and dragging my feet to go.  After a few weeks, I decided there was a problem, and I needed to examine myself and talk to God about it to see what the problem was and how I needed to fix it.

At first I felt so guilty and ashamed for even have the feeling of hatred of church.  As I began to pray about it and think alot about it, the Holy Spirit continued His work in me.  I began to realize that my view and love for church was ALL wrong (based off of what God's thoughts are on church).  I began to understand that the church is not the church I go to, but instead is the group of believers.  Instead of me going to church, I AM the church!  Wow!  I had heard this spoken and preached many times, but I never understood until the Holy Spirit spoke it to me.

My good friend and spiritual mentor, Terri Otto, who is now dancing and worshiping our Father in Heaven, recommended that I read the book "So, I Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore."  I LOVED the book and the words I read jumped off the pages because they were the very things the Holy Spirit had been changing in my heart and now I saw them as words.  My whole perception of church changed.

This is a very scary thing to talk about amongst Christians, because so many are not on the same page and there is immediate judgement and scowling down at my thoughts and words.  But, this is exactly where I live off of my convictions and teaching from the Holy Spirit, and I am not here to please people but God!

I have came to find that there are many Christians who have similar feelings, but feel ashamed and just push them down quietly and just keep going to church and serving until the feeling leaves.  I encourage you to take any thoughts and feelings to God and not to just suppress them.  Many times, the Holy Spirit is doing His work in us when it just doesn't make sense to us.  We must question and pray about it.  During this time I felt a great urgency to not ask man, trusted friends, or pastors about my thoughts, but instead to take it directly to God.  With as wise as friends and pastors can be, they are still human and do not have all the knowledge that Christ has and wants to give us.

When I began to see and understand what the Holy Spirit was teaching me, I also realized that the Church is Christ's Bride and He loves her no matter how imperfect she may be, therefore I should not gripe about her or try to change her.

So, I am still praying and asking God to show me what His intentions are for me to be part of His Church.  How do I need to live it out in my life?  I believe that each person is on his/her own journey and that God has His place for each person along their own journey and we are all at different places.  So, what's right for me at this time does not mean that it is right with all.  There must be no judgement!

At this time, I am in fellowship with other believers at Onelife Community Church.  I will talk about how I came to be part of this "church" in a later blog.