Christ Alone, Cornerstone

Isn’t this a breath of fresh air?

It should be because we know he is coming for us. This is my everything, all I need somedays. It’s a good thing too because sometimes it’s all I have both to give and receive.

A few years ago, we woke up one morning and dreaded heading to church. This is not like us at all. I had been a member of the same church since I was in the third grade. We were married there. Our kids were all baptized there. Over thirty years of combined experiences. My parents were in leadership, my husband and I were in leadership and our children were raised there. We had a lot of investment. These people were our family.

Until they weren’t.

When you pray for patience, God sends you something incredibly hard to learn it. I prayed for spiritual revelation within myself. I knew Jesus, but I didn’t know him. I realized during some serious spiritual awakenings, my church was full of people I didn’t know anymore. Everyone was so caught up in “doing their thing”, there wasn’t a lot of room for Jesus.

Suddenly I felt “homeless”.

We were told via text message by an elder there “isn’t anything here for you anymore”. It was stunning and surreal. It was hurtful and awful. We were put into a position where we had to either go along with the status quo or take a stand not only for ourselves but for Jesus.

When we took that stand, more than half of them didn’t even notice. It felt impossible. We never thought in a million years some of our closest Christian friends would bail on our family. We never saw this coming. We were on our own.

The hardest part about the entire scenario? We ended up being right and it was nothing to celebrate.

One of the biggest issues was accountability. Some people were being told they couldn’t serve, teach or lead because their “sin” was too public, out in the open. Not everyone- just a few.

It looked like persecution on a whole different scale. It felt uncomfortable and inconsistent. It was not like anything we had ever witnessed. We both felt the Holy Spirit move us to a point of restlessness. We knew after this experience it was time to leave.

In the grand scheme of things, our decisions were made prayerfully and we considered all the factors. We finally realized this was God designed. We were moving forward with our spiritual lives and needed more than our church was offering.

Looking back at relationships lost and people we miss, it has been a long road. There have been times I needed some of those people, but because we left they simply weren’t available to me anymore. I have mourned the deaths of old friends and watched some of the kids grow into amazing adults, but all from a distance.

I guess my point is this- be ready for God to step in and awe you with his power, grace, and mercy.

Be prepared when you get a lesson in humility and humanity, sometimes wrapped up into one not-so-neat package. Be sure when you belong to a church, you actually belong to Christ himself. You don’t serve people, you serve Jesus. And when the Holy Spirit whispers restlessness to your heart, follow it. He knows what he is doing.

XOXO