Faith
WHAT MY SCARS HAVE TOLD ME
Despite what a lot of clergy and people in position of church power want to believe, God does give me visions. The Holy Spirit does speak to me. I didn't have to graduate with a high degree, spend 25 years serving as a deacon, or any other credential viewed as necessary before you're at the right level to hear God's voice. Oddly enough, you'd be hard pressed to get anyone, in a position of any kind of power in church, to believe that God has given you any kind of vision, if you haven't worked your way through the church ranks ("God isn't saying anything to you, you've only been at this church for a year"). But doesn't this sound a lot like the Pharisees? The very people we preach against in church?
Regardless, God did give me a vision. He put a thirst deep inside of me. A mission He has sent me to accomplish. How did He do this? by allowing me to be afflicted with severe life scars. Things that keep me up all night. Pain I've been wrestling with for years. Desperately seeking an end to the hurt, and seeking comfort and restoration for the loss. Why didn't God just heal me Himself, immediately? Because God, at this point, was using me to paint a picture. After allowing me to be afflicted with those scars, He gave me a command to further illustrate my vision. He looked down on the pain I was in and said, "Now, go and seek healing and restoration at your church." A task in which 5 years and 3 churches later, I had been unable to do. My deep wounds remained, not only unhealed, but even untouched. No matter how many services I sat through, how many times I went up for prayer, how many sermons I heard, how many saints I worked with, my thirst remained unquenched. With a hunger equal to the scars I had, I found myself unable to feed off of anything in church. I eventually went to God in prayer and said, "God, this isn't helping."... And that's when God told me, "Exactly."
"The pain you're feeling is too deep to be covered up by the emotionalism of singing, dancing, and shouting. The kind of pain that has scarred your life can only be healed and restored by a deep fountain of living water. You need the substance of spirit. Which is sadly missing from my church today. Western civilization and culture has seeped into my church and watered it down. Now all of my children live this comfortable, safe, American-dream Christianity, rather than the substance of the radical, reckless self-abandonment that I required in my word (I told the desciples to leave their families and follow me, I told a man not to go to his father's funeral to follow me, and commanded the rich man to sell all he had). Without the substance of that kind of living from my children, pain like yours goes unanswered. Which is what many hurting people in my world are finding out; thus, turning their backs on church. Anyone who disputes this, let the evidence of dropping church attendance speak for itself. Why are they leaving if they were getting what they need? Because they're not! Unfortunately Andre, you're pain must continue with you. As long as it remains, it is a testament to you that it has been unhealed by church, therefore fueling you're vision. This will be evidence that I have spoken to you."
So, God has given me a vision and calling to clarify Christianity from the American dream. So His true church will be defined and gathered, because His coming is close... Extremely close! In fact, He has placed in my heart (and two other people I know of) that events should start taking place within the next 5 years! No one knows the day or the hour, but Jesus said we would know the season. But I still haven’t hit the point I'm aiming for with all of this.
My scars have produced a hunger for God in me that remains untouched by church service. I come to, and leave from church service with the exact same thirst. Seeing through all the service events, un-helped by them all. But rather than leave the churches I was attending, I thought to myself, "If I am unable to draw out of the church, let me put into the church." And in each church I've been to, I have attempted to start a class I called, "Lesson for Life." A class in which people would come and deal with deep emotional scars, like my own. With things I have learned from my own past. However, in each church I've been to, my attempts to start this class have been shut down. "Instead of teaching that, can you start teaching this? Instead of doing that, can you just officiate morning service? No, I don't like that, don't teach that. I don't think God called you to say anything like that. Do this instead." Helping run a standard Sunday morning church service is not what I've been called to do. In fact, the vision that God gave me is sort of anti-church (at least in church's current state). But regardless, I'm not a church boy. I don't get a single ounce of spiritual fulfillment out of "Choir selection, offering, announcements, choir selection, sermon." I've tried, but it's not doing anything for me. I'm not drawing anything out, but I'm prevented by the clergy from putting anything in. So I just sit in a pew each Sunday, completely unmoved and untouched.
But the Bible says, "If you go into a house or a city, and they reject your words or your ministry, leave quickly, and shake the dust from your feet." I should have already left this behind. Due to my love for the people I attend church with, I haven't left. But I can no longer just take up space on a church pew, knowing that nothing inside of me is being spiritually fed by church service (this is my dilemma, it may not be yours, so don't try to change my mind about this). And the Bible says, "Any tree that does not produce fruit will be cut down by my Father and thrown into the fire." So I can't just sit in a pew, taking up space. I will be judged by God if I did so. I have to produce the fruit of the vision given to me. Unfortunately, I have found out that it won't be done in some one else’s church (at least not in any of the churches I've been to). And even Paul said, "I will not build on another man's work." So I must do this my own way. With a lot of prayer.
I have no intentions on forsaking the assembling of the brethren. I will visit churches to fellowship, and will gather in and out of church with other believers. But my ministry will find it's own way. I will write and speak whenever and where ever I am called, under no one's jurisdiction but God's, until a foundation is dug for me somewhere. I do not claim to have mastered any of this, but what I do know, I will teach. While no one knows the day or the hour, God has told me, "Just know you guys don't have too much longer." The message that you are to take from this writing is that church must be filtered from the American dream in preparation of Jesus’ coming. Do not be distracted by any details not mentioned here, they are not the point of this writing. Focus on what has been said here, take it or leave it.
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