Rest for the Weary

Many of you know, I took a minor rest from Facebook for a time being. My heart has been troubled as my foundation of faith has been shaken probably these last few years, however more apparent, these last few months. My anxiety keeps reaching a height, higher than before, with only glimpses of peace from time to time. I've often believed that if I could just get my faith straightened out, perhaps anxiety would diminish. My faith has been rocked simply because I'm reaching a new understanding of the Gospel. All of my life I've been raised to know that Jesus died for my sins and to try to live this "moral life" for Him. You see, perhaps it was a good start, and I believe somewhere along the way, even in the midst of my sins, I grew in that theology a bit. God doesn't waste a thing. However, I think even in my darkest days, to the time I came back to church, I was still trying to live this so-called life on my own, just because I was supposed to. Yeah, it was to please God, but the key is that I've been trying to do it on my own.

Anyways, as my anxiety has been hitting an uncomfortable peak, the time from FB was to give me time with the Lord. I've been wrestling and wrestling and wrestling. I've come to the reality of my condition, prior to Christ. Romans 3:10 talks about how "none is righteous, not even one." Apart from Christ, we have NOTHING to offer God. Many out there claim to be "good people." That's not enough. If you claim to be a "good person" then you are glorifying yourself and it takes away from Christ's work on the cross. You see though, that even though the Bible says that "none is righteous," God provided a way for us to be righteous. There had to be a perfect sacrifice for our sins. That was Christ. God is just. He hates sin. And with sin, there has to be a punishment, otherwise God would cease to be just. The alternative, the atonement was Jesus Christ, shedding His precious blood for us, to cover us, and save us from God's wrath (wrath because of sin, beginning with Adam and Eve). 1 John 4:10 says, "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation of our sins." You see, we were helpless. I fell into that for a while. I kept thinking that I could do something to earn my salvation. But you see, if I had kept down that road, I would've been no better off than the Pharisees, trying to live by the letter of the Law, being hypocritical to the world.

In this time from Facebook, I had time with God, many of it with tears. Tears because the reality of my sins hit me like a ton of bricks. And the realization that I deserve nothing. For a time, I carried the weight of my sins, the weight of my past, and this just recently. I kept going back, going back, wondering if I had committed the unpardonable sin because at age 13, I supposedly answered the altar call to have my sins forgiven, then years later, I walked in darkness for some years. But I came to two thoughts tonight. Perhaps, I was never truly saved then, in which case, that didn't mean I couldn't be now. Or it meant that I lost my way for a while, and like the Prodigal Son, I came home! I still wrestled, and still may for a bit, but I don't think in those years of darkness, I ever denied who I was or renounced Christ. I just chose to go on disobeying. But I also have to believe that God called me from the darkness because there were some places I would still be, had God not pulled me from the Abyss. I have to believe that I wouldn't be so sensitive to my dark past and to sin, if the Holy Spirit didn't reside in me. And I have to believe that in realizing my sin and confessing it, and not wanting to got there anymore, according to Romans 8:1, "Therefore there is now now more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." And perhaps God did pull me out of darkness because Paul says in Philippians 1:6, "And I'm sure of this, that He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." These are the promises I must hold on to.

I spoke with a pastor the other day at church about some of the wrestling and doubt in my mind. One of the things he said, which really has taken root in me is that when we consider our place with God, we must not look inward. Because when we look inward, we see all of the sin and imperfections and that we realize we can't live up this perfect standard. So, in that case, we must look outward at Christ's work on the cross and trust HIM as Savior. That my faith must be put in Jesus Christ alone, and not in any merit on my part. And the reason it's not done on our own merit, is that we don't boast in ourselves and glorify ourselves. It's to glorify our Creator. Galatians 6:14 says, "But far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." And also Ephesians 2:8,9 "For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith, and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast."

I've also come to realize how much sweeter grace is, when we see the reality of sin. Once we see our condition, grace seems that much better. The love of God then makes so much more sense. "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see..." There was an illustration done in our membership class at church, that I just love. I can't draw it on here, but the point was that the deeper reality we have of our sin, the greater reality we have of the holiness of God. Sin and holiness start together at one point, then a line is drawn moving diagonally upward from that point, and sin is a line drawn diagonally downward from that point, and in between the lines, you draw crosses, that end up bigger and bigger. So, as we recognize sin more and more, we recognize God's holiness more and more and the cross becomes that much bigger, that much more necessary, and that much sweeter.

I feel like Peter most days when Jesus had just taught some hard things and many people left. Peter was left standing there and Jesus asked if he was going to leave too and Peter said something along the lines of, "where else can I go? You have the gift of eternal life." There are days I also feel like, "I believe, help my unbelief."

You know, once I realized the graveness of my sins, it made God's love that much more awesome. And I think I see now where works fits into the whole mix. Our works come of the freedom we have to serve because of the cross. We serve because we want to serve. We love because God first loved us. His love and mercy in my life enables me to love and be merciful to others by the same grace that was extended to me in my years of darkness. If God can forgive my mess, it makes it that much easier to forgive others' offenses toward me.

So, in closing, my time away from Facebook, may lead to more time away because it is in these times that I chose to spend time with the Lord and wrestle with Him and pray and read His Word and come before my Creator and learn of His great love! I pray that I may never return to the dark life I once lived. It's not worth trading it up for the precious love of Jesus!

Our Church Journey

It has been an extremely long time since I last wrote, but I've been thinking up this post for a while. I will bore you with some background info before making my point. We have continued through one or two more churches since my last post, and what a journey this has been! Our search for church, has been more or less a search for truth, and truth can be found in a number of churches. We recently made a decision to leave a house church of which we were members of for 1.5 years because my husband couldn't seem to find his place. It was a church that focused on relational brokenness, but he just couldn't figure out how that applied to him or what his place was. It was far the opposite of what he was used to since leaving some of his catholic roots. So, we left to pursue other options. We went back to a presbyterian church for the time being until we had some time to really search what was out there.

In this day in age, there is a church on every corner, everything ranging from traditional catholic, to catholic charasmatic, to methodist, lutheran, pentecostal. So, where on earth does one begin? Well, the church we settled at temporarily had a strong teacher in the Word, but it just didn't feel like our community. It was only about a 20 minute distance, however the church was not our community. I had my eyes focused on one in the area, however heard some not so good things about their doctrines and beliefs, but I remained curious. Friends of ours started going there and after some time of them spent there, we met with them for dinner to get some of their feedback. I knew they had a strong biblical foundation and were seeking a church that offered that, so I trusted some of their thoughts. So, after our conversations, we gave it a try, and now currently we remain in membership classes within weeks of joining the community, most likely.

Now, what is my point in all of this? From the time we made the decision to leave our last community, we have battled some resistance along the way. Many have been encouraging to us, some, more discouraging. Some resistance has come from the fact that we haven't settled in one community in the last 6 or so years. Some resistance is coming from the "denomination" we have chosen to become a part of. Much of the encouragement has been to go where the Lord leads and seek after truth, trust in the discernment of my husband and go where he feels he needs to be, being he is the head of our household. You see, he was falling apart. Reading the Bible was a past time from time to time. Now, we are all just hungry, hungry, hungry for the Word. We can't get enough. We can't seem to feed the kids enough.

And again, I digress. My point is not to say that one church is better than the other. But I will say this. I have heard the gospel message, weekly, presented in a way, that I haven't heard it before. It is the central message every week. I'm coming from a season of rough anxiety and wrestling with my faith. But to hear the gospel in a fresh sense, I feel renewed. I see joy again. Many don't like churches that just teach sin because it's depressing, and there are those churches that only teach sin. Many don't like churches that just preach love, because we then forget what we once were. I find joy in the teaching of sin AND grace because, as I learned today, the more we recognize our sin, what we once were, the sweeter the sound of grace is. The joy comes in knowing that God still loves me, despite my failures. The cross is the central message. It was Jesus and the cross that saved me, not anything I did or didn't do. It was not a works oriented righteousness. It was grace and grace alone.

You see, I've been criticized for "church hopping" and choosing churches in which there is always someone strongly warning me to stay away from it. And whether our decisions have been right or wrong, God used every single place we step foot in, to help grow us, to help grow me. Folks, God is STILL God. He speaks to us and teaches us at every point of our journey. This is the point of my whole blog. I grew up in my early younger years, Lutheran. That's how I was baptized. From there, we went to a small non-denominational church that met in a house then high school. When that church folded, we ended up in another non-denominational church, and from there another one, and that one was the one at age 13, I moved forward and professed my relationship with Christ. There I remained for most of high school and enjoyed youth group, Young Life and Campaigners. Youth Group was fun, it was community, it was a place I could have a good time without getting into trouble. Then I fell away after high school, and it was pretty bad. Entered a life of partying and immoral behavior, but after 4 or 5 years, I came back to a small church under Open Bible. I immediately became involved and found a group of people that embraced me, because I didn't have much left once I left the lifestyle I was involved in. That church brought me back in and embraced me, showed me what a family was like. Then I met Keith, and as the blog states, I ended up in the Catholic church. And it was there I learned that not all catholics are bad. I had some pre-conceived notions of catholicism, and ended up meeting some wonderful spirit-filled catholics. Then we left again and ended up in a very different church. It was a church of mostly younger people. It was there I learned that the idea of community isn't dead. They were people that loved and embraced anyone who walked in their doors. From there we went on to Assemblies of God and teaching was excellent, but church was slowly dying there. And from there we ended up in a place that did church from home. It was there I learned about tight knit community and an aspect that I've never been aware of before, brokenness. People that had some extreme issues in their lives, extreme circumstances and what the love of God pulled them away from. From there we did the Presbyterian thing for a while. It's there I started to learn a little more about reformed theology. It was a place with solid teaching but community lead us to where we are now, a place where the gospel is the central message alongside of the importance of Scripture and sound teaching of it.

And for my life, I believe God brought me on this journey. I believe in reformed theology. I'm starting to believe that it was God that pulled me out of sin, that I couldn't have done it on my own merit. The relationship that I was in years ago, I never would've ended that on my own. God, through that person, ended it for me. Otherwise, I wouldn't have done it, and continued in that co-dependent relationship. So, when God did that, I just transferred my dependency onto something else. Alcohol and partying, not that I wasn't already doing that, but it got worse. If it wasn't for one party and all my "friends" turning their backs on me, my party friends, I could be a alcoholic to this day. My own friends, people I was part of the "world" with turned there back never to forgive. THAT WAS A WAKE UP CALL. Even they thought I was too out of control. That was all God, not me. I wouldn't have done that on my own. God slowly brought me back to His family. You see, I have nothing to do with it. God DID call me first. I came to Him because He came to me first. That is what I'm learning now. And I still battle with anxiety and co-dependency. But now I can at least count it as pure joy that because of Christ and the cross, I was saved from that life. I thank Jesus every day, that the cross was enough to cover that multitude of sin. I thank God for loving me enough to get me out, to rescue me.

You see, my journey has not been one minute of waste. Do I have regrets? Too many to count. But it hasn't been wasted, not one single moment or incident. God used it all and will continue to do so. I have been a part of at least most of the mainstream denominations for a period of time. But I don't look for perfection, I look for truth. I don't look for leadership that points me to themselves, but ones that will point me to Christ. Folks, I"m not one to slam any church out there because God even uses the sick ones and can make them well. But one thing I will say, it's important to hear truth because we live in an age of relativism where truth is fuzzy. And if you are listening, God will lead you along the journey. And it's not going to look the same for everyone. Maybe it needed to take 6 years of searching to get to this community. Perhaps we made some mistakes along the way, but gosh, here's the beauty of grace. Even in the midst of my failures, God is STILL God and he is still working. Not saying those decisions were failures, but IF they were, THANK GOD FOR GRACE. And this is the grace we must exercise toward each other. We speak the truth in love. We used God's Word for building up, encouraging, training, reproofing.... And we allow God's grace to take people through their journeys. Because we don't always know what God is doing in someone's life. "For His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts, our thoughts." God is God everywhere.

Please don't take this as me looking at the local church/community as unimportant. I am not saying that at all. In fact, I'm learning through membership in our existing church the importance of staying committed to a local church/community. I just wanted to share a little of my journey and experiences with God's grace. Because in the end, it's never about us, it's about Him, it's about His glory. We are here for Him. One of the ways he brings others to himself is through local church. But also remember, it isn't JUST about the local body, because corporately we are still ONE body with MANY members, inside of and outside of local community. And as long as it's not compromising biblical truth, we must put aside the things that divide us because we ALL need each other and God gave us each other.

Anyways, being I haven't posted in a while, this one is kind of messy, but it's been on my mind. Let us be gracious to each other the same way God was gracious to us.