I was raised in a Southern Baptist church in a small town in Southeast Kansas. I have never lived my life apart from a local church. Whenever the doors were open, we were there. My Dad was the song leader for many of my growing-up years. We had several families that came, and quite a few children. However, as I got older, more and more families left for various reasons, but for whatever reasons, the relationships were breaking down and not being fixed. By the time my sister went off to college, I was the only one in the youth group. It is very hard to press in to know God more and to want to do His will when nobody your age is, and the relationships in your church are not very strong. My church had no vision for legacy. The legacy left, and all that remained were a handful of older people staying together out of tradition and a longing for the “good old days”. The Bible says, “Without a vision, the people parish” Proverbs 29:18. Fortunately, today, that church has a new minister who has birthed a new vision, and some of the people who had left when I was a child are coming back, and so are some of their kids and grandkids. However, I dare say they are not out of danger if the things that they are building upon are not what Christ desires for a local church to built upon: relationships with Him and each other and a vision for legacy.
After I married, we found church after church with the same dilemma: mostly older people, mostly women, few children, and fewer still young people that DESIRED to be there. The little children came with their parents, and most of the older kids came because their parents made them come, even if they were kicking and screaming. They are the youth that sit in the back, arms crossed across their chests, rebellious to any authority, coming to church hoping to find a boyfriend/girlfriend to at least justify “wasting time” there. Even sadder is the fact that people think of them as good church kids just because they fill a pew! Do we really just want bodies to fill space, or are we building a church that would fulfill the purposes of Christ on the earth? After punching our religious timeclock for a few years, Dennis and I came to a point in our lives where we felt spiritually dead. We were longing for relationships, only to find none; we were longing to find a place where God was alive and moving. We kept saying, “There’s got to be more!”
There are two reasons people leave a church: 1) out of purpose 2) out of perversion. If you are leaving for any reason other than finding the purpose of God for your life, then you are leaving for the wrong reason. If you leave because you had a fight with someone, or you just don’t like someone there, or you are not happy with how “they” spent your money, etc., then you are leaving with unresolved sin issues that will follow you to the next church you decide to call home.
After much prayer and desperation, Dennis and I knew we had to find where God was actively moving and where we could begin to have a family. We knew that we did not want to start having babies before finding a place where they could grow up knowing, loving and serving God, not just knowing about God and being religious church kids.
There is a big difference between knowing God and knowing about God. You can gain all the academic knowledge you can about God, be able to recite the Bible forwards and backwards, and yet not have a clue what God’s thoughts and ways are about. How does one know God that way? The same way you know your best friend inside and out. You spend time with Him, talk to Him, be open to Him, share everything about who you are and what you think with Him. It’s called being transparent. When I live an open, transparent life, I’m laying everything out on the table for someone to see. Not just the good, fluffy stuff, but my bad side, too. And we ALL have a good AND a bad side.
We were all born sinners. But just because I have a good side doesn’t make me saved. I’m still a sinner. What makes me saved is the fact that I have acknowledged that Jesus died on the cross for my sins, and because of His blood, I can boldly come before the God of the universe and ask for His forgiveness and let Him be Lord of my life. You see, before Jesus came, people had to sacrifice animals in order to have forgiveness of sins. You see it in the Old Testament and in historical Jewish documents. Sacrifices were made at different times throughout the year in order to cleanse the people of their sins. The animals had to be without blemish, spotless. They had to be pure. No human is pure, so they used the blood of animals. However, history changed when Jesus came into the picture. He was the only perfect human; both absolutely human and absolutely God. The Bible talks about Jesus praying the night before his death for God to take the cup away from him, unless that was what God’s will or purpose had to be. The cup he is referring to is the cup that holds all of man’s sins (yours and mine). He looked into that cup, saw all of the corruption, deceitfulness, lies, lust, sexual immorality, idolatry, murder, and bitterness that we had committed and chose to drink it. He chose to put all of those sins, both present and future, upon himself, even though he was sinless, in order to be the living sacrifice for us so that we would have a way to come before God covered by his pure blood. Before Jesus, only the high priests saw God. They were allowed into the Holy of Holies, a room where God’s presence dwelt, only once a year, and if they were not cleansed and holy, they would die in the presence of God. Once Jesus died for us, the veil between the Holy of Holies and the rest of the tabernacle was split wide open. Jesus made a way for God’s presence to be among us and for us not to die when He is with us. When the reality of that hits us, and we become keenly aware that we have not been in God’s presence in such a way that it has changed us, then we are living as if we know Him, but in reality we only know about Him.
Showing posts with label church. Show all posts
Showing posts with label church. Show all posts
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Airplane story
So, I am finally back from all of my vacations...however, I have one more trip Aug 4-6 to Kirksville, MO for a teacher's gathering. (sigh) I haven't had much of a usual "summer break", but hopefully will get accomplished all I need to before school starts. All this traveling makes me wonder if I will. It has been a good summer, though. I would take this any day over remodeling!
I wanted to tell my readers a story about the lady I sat next to on the flight home. She was a very spunky elderly woman. At first, we didn't say much to each other. She had grabbed a book to read, and I settled in next to Molly and grabbed Dennis's iPod to pass the time. We had a very funny flight attendant who came on the microphone and began telling "Steve Haden" type jokes. It was really the best flight I had ever been on because he made it so much fun. After he told a few jokes, the woman next to me began to say how "cute" that flight attendant was and how Southwest Airlines started. They only flew out of Texas, and their stewardesses wore short "hot pants", white cowboy boots and white cowboy hats, and they would line up like a chorus line and "dance" you off the plane. Very funny. They would also throw peanuts to you from across the plane. (Lamberts, anyone?)
She then began to tell me that she is 84 years old. She played tennis until she was 80. She and 5 of her friends all made a pact in their 60's that they would continue to play as long as they could, and they would try to play until they were 80. They all did. Cool.
She used to be a school teacher, so I told her that I am, too. I told her about our church school, and she was very interested. I found out that she has a rebellious streak in her, though. She said that when they outlawed saying the Lord's Prayer in school, she obeyed; however, her superintendent told all teachers to continue saying it. All the other teachers continued except her. He called her into his office and asked her why she refused to say the Lord's Prayer with her class. She told him that it was against the law and she wasn't going to disobey the law. He told her, "I am more afraid of His law (pointing upward) than that law." She told me she still wouldn't do it, and replied, "I've always been a sort of protester."
She goes to a certain denominational church, and she told me a couple of shocking things. She told me that a while back during a church service, a lady got up to speak. "Now, I know that may be normal in your church, but in OUR denomination, you DON'T do that kind of thing." The lady spoke about how she is a lesbian and she has been to several churches, but this church has been the kindest, most non-judgmental church that she had been to and was thanking them. After that lady spoke, a man got up and said how two of his sons are gay and they have said the same thing. This church is a place where they feel more welcomed. The woman on the plane looked at me and said, "Now, I was thinking to myself, 'I don't necessarily think that that is a good thing.' But I'm 84 years old, and I'm too old to go church shopping, so I will stay there, but I'm wondering where we are headed." **Note: I would hope that lesbians and gays would feel the love of Jesus at any church, but if they found a church to stay in, I would hope that someone would challenge them and their lifestyle. I don't believe in being mean-spirited to them, but I would want them to know the truth--absolute truth--of God's Word.
The second shocking thing she told me was that she and 5 of her friends all raised their children in church. A while back they were sitting around and began asking each other how many of their children were going to a church. She said, "Do you know how many of all of our children go to church? Zero. Nobody." She told me how their church has only elderly people, and she doesn't understand where all the young people went. She said, "I know the evangelical churches are really the ones that are growing. They really get out there and are the movers and shakers. I just don't know what happened with my kids. I took them faithfully, and I was raised to be there every Sunday and Wednesday, but my kids and grandkids don't go anywhere." "Wow," I thought. That would be so very disheartening. I began to talk with her about the thinking of this age, postmodernism, etc. How what is right for you may not be right for me...this is the thinking of today. There is no absolute truth. I pray. I pray that my children will never let the thinking of today or tomorrow be their way of thinking. I pray that my children will have such a sure foundation of who Jesus is, that there IS an absolute truth--called God's Word--that they always need Jesus. We all do.
I wanted to tell my readers a story about the lady I sat next to on the flight home. She was a very spunky elderly woman. At first, we didn't say much to each other. She had grabbed a book to read, and I settled in next to Molly and grabbed Dennis's iPod to pass the time. We had a very funny flight attendant who came on the microphone and began telling "Steve Haden" type jokes. It was really the best flight I had ever been on because he made it so much fun. After he told a few jokes, the woman next to me began to say how "cute" that flight attendant was and how Southwest Airlines started. They only flew out of Texas, and their stewardesses wore short "hot pants", white cowboy boots and white cowboy hats, and they would line up like a chorus line and "dance" you off the plane. Very funny. They would also throw peanuts to you from across the plane. (Lamberts, anyone?)
She then began to tell me that she is 84 years old. She played tennis until she was 80. She and 5 of her friends all made a pact in their 60's that they would continue to play as long as they could, and they would try to play until they were 80. They all did. Cool.
She used to be a school teacher, so I told her that I am, too. I told her about our church school, and she was very interested. I found out that she has a rebellious streak in her, though. She said that when they outlawed saying the Lord's Prayer in school, she obeyed; however, her superintendent told all teachers to continue saying it. All the other teachers continued except her. He called her into his office and asked her why she refused to say the Lord's Prayer with her class. She told him that it was against the law and she wasn't going to disobey the law. He told her, "I am more afraid of His law (pointing upward) than that law." She told me she still wouldn't do it, and replied, "I've always been a sort of protester."
She goes to a certain denominational church, and she told me a couple of shocking things. She told me that a while back during a church service, a lady got up to speak. "Now, I know that may be normal in your church, but in OUR denomination, you DON'T do that kind of thing." The lady spoke about how she is a lesbian and she has been to several churches, but this church has been the kindest, most non-judgmental church that she had been to and was thanking them. After that lady spoke, a man got up and said how two of his sons are gay and they have said the same thing. This church is a place where they feel more welcomed. The woman on the plane looked at me and said, "Now, I was thinking to myself, 'I don't necessarily think that that is a good thing.' But I'm 84 years old, and I'm too old to go church shopping, so I will stay there, but I'm wondering where we are headed." **Note: I would hope that lesbians and gays would feel the love of Jesus at any church, but if they found a church to stay in, I would hope that someone would challenge them and their lifestyle. I don't believe in being mean-spirited to them, but I would want them to know the truth--absolute truth--of God's Word.
The second shocking thing she told me was that she and 5 of her friends all raised their children in church. A while back they were sitting around and began asking each other how many of their children were going to a church. She said, "Do you know how many of all of our children go to church? Zero. Nobody." She told me how their church has only elderly people, and she doesn't understand where all the young people went. She said, "I know the evangelical churches are really the ones that are growing. They really get out there and are the movers and shakers. I just don't know what happened with my kids. I took them faithfully, and I was raised to be there every Sunday and Wednesday, but my kids and grandkids don't go anywhere." "Wow," I thought. That would be so very disheartening. I began to talk with her about the thinking of this age, postmodernism, etc. How what is right for you may not be right for me...this is the thinking of today. There is no absolute truth. I pray. I pray that my children will never let the thinking of today or tomorrow be their way of thinking. I pray that my children will have such a sure foundation of who Jesus is, that there IS an absolute truth--called God's Word--that they always need Jesus. We all do.
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