I saw your comments on 'Simple Christianity's chat' about what you're struggling most with in your walk now. You wrote: "Tall question. I can't think of a simple answer. The world I believed I was living in has been revealed to be something else, and more evil than I imagined. I could say something similar about the Church. The people I knew mostly don't quite seem to have noticed. What does a person do with that?"
Below was my response:
"I concur with your thoughts 100%! The LIES are everywhere (including the so called 'truth community' and I absolutely agree "the church" is not what I thought. "Church" to me now seems to be just about religion (or ritual). I have to continually be in prayer and reading. At times, I'm overwhelmed with the evil. I pray continually: to be conformed to Jesus' image, for wisdom, help and strength, to always tell the truth, to confess my sins and to prepare to "love not my life" for the testimony of Jesus. I know how weak I am but trust that God will equip me at all the right moments. No one seems to know how late the hour is. I'll keep you in prayer!"
James 1:5 was a memory verse for a Sunday school class I assisted in 2019 (I led the 3rd grade small group breakout for a few months; amazing kids). There was a song to go with the verse that I can almost remember.
It is hard for me to write about this. I can see certain things happening in the world and in the church, but I often don't know what to say. But I can try. Earlier in my adult life I reached a point where what I was seeing in the church was too much, and I left. Not the brightest thing to do but I did it. Twice. I gave up on God, too, both times, gradually the first time and quickly the second. Atheism made no sense so I took the deist path. And God brought me back both times after a good long time, important lessons learned.
2020 was different. I was aghast at what I saw the churches doing, and the "flavor" of church didn't matter. I belonged at the time to an evangelical Baptist church, but I also had connections with other evangelical and mainline churches, none of which appeared to understand what was really going on and none of which managed the situation well, although the mainline churches handled it especially badly, bowing to "authority" in every way, openly violating their own stated principles.
I didn't leave my church this time; it left me. After months of being excluded while they dealt with crisis upon crisis, and while trying to get the people to shut up that kept sounding the warnings, I moved to another one a little closer to my house that appeared to be in a better place, and that I had visited once before. That lasted six months, during which my housemate returned to the faith, having been away even longer than me. My interim church was too much of a mess for her, and we ended up together at an another church farther from the house, but another one that I was familiar with, and that is where we both are now.
I am purposely not going into much detail, but this was so much worse than anything I had ever seen within the church, and yet my faith did not waver, not this time. Those lessons really were learned. I found that I had more time for Bible study and prayer, and for reading books about the problems of churches, and I discovered churches online with leadership that hadn't lost its way or mind, which was encouraging. One of those is still my "second church", filling in the gaps in teaching of my local church. I also began studying biblical Greek, something I had in mind growing up but never started until now.
I also found detailed information that allowed me to see accurately what was taking place throughout 2020 and 2021. I'm not good at finding such things -- this was answered prayer. Particular sources would go on for a while and then fizzle out, and I would discover new ones to replace them. I tried to warn people, but I was either censored online (shadow banned) or people didn't want to hear it in person, for the most part, although there were exceptions. I've not had to retract anything that I said, and the information may have saved a couple of lives.
In 2020 I also reached out to two mainline churches with which I had connections, and I participated with them online during that year. I couldn't bring them to their senses, and didn't try, but I did attempt to introduce a bit of the gospel here and there where I could. It's not something they understood or preached.
But what I witnessed shook me to the core and nothing about this world appears quite the same any longer. My personal experience is similar to what you describe, as are my expectations. I see the end coming and I live accordingly. If I have to die for my faith, so be it; the choices now are clear. God has also been helping me to remember my earlier life -- I asked for that -- and it's nothing to be proud of. This online outreach, well, I don't know. I think I may be learning a few things about how to do it. Perhaps something here will make a difference for someone, if not now then when things get really bad.
I saw your comments on 'Simple Christianity's chat' about what you're struggling most with in your walk now. You wrote: "Tall question. I can't think of a simple answer. The world I believed I was living in has been revealed to be something else, and more evil than I imagined. I could say something similar about the Church. The people I knew mostly don't quite seem to have noticed. What does a person do with that?"
Below was my response:
"I concur with your thoughts 100%! The LIES are everywhere (including the so called 'truth community' and I absolutely agree "the church" is not what I thought. "Church" to me now seems to be just about religion (or ritual). I have to continually be in prayer and reading. At times, I'm overwhelmed with the evil. I pray continually: to be conformed to Jesus' image, for wisdom, help and strength, to always tell the truth, to confess my sins and to prepare to "love not my life" for the testimony of Jesus. I know how weak I am but trust that God will equip me at all the right moments. No one seems to know how late the hour is. I'll keep you in prayer!"
James 1:5 was a memory verse for a Sunday school class I assisted in 2019 (I led the 3rd grade small group breakout for a few months; amazing kids). There was a song to go with the verse that I can almost remember.
It is hard for me to write about this. I can see certain things happening in the world and in the church, but I often don't know what to say. But I can try. Earlier in my adult life I reached a point where what I was seeing in the church was too much, and I left. Not the brightest thing to do but I did it. Twice. I gave up on God, too, both times, gradually the first time and quickly the second. Atheism made no sense so I took the deist path. And God brought me back both times after a good long time, important lessons learned.
2020 was different. I was aghast at what I saw the churches doing, and the "flavor" of church didn't matter. I belonged at the time to an evangelical Baptist church, but I also had connections with other evangelical and mainline churches, none of which appeared to understand what was really going on and none of which managed the situation well, although the mainline churches handled it especially badly, bowing to "authority" in every way, openly violating their own stated principles.
I didn't leave my church this time; it left me. After months of being excluded while they dealt with crisis upon crisis, and while trying to get the people to shut up that kept sounding the warnings, I moved to another one a little closer to my house that appeared to be in a better place, and that I had visited once before. That lasted six months, during which my housemate returned to the faith, having been away even longer than me. My interim church was too much of a mess for her, and we ended up together at an another church farther from the house, but another one that I was familiar with, and that is where we both are now.
I am purposely not going into much detail, but this was so much worse than anything I had ever seen within the church, and yet my faith did not waver, not this time. Those lessons really were learned. I found that I had more time for Bible study and prayer, and for reading books about the problems of churches, and I discovered churches online with leadership that hadn't lost its way or mind, which was encouraging. One of those is still my "second church", filling in the gaps in teaching of my local church. I also began studying biblical Greek, something I had in mind growing up but never started until now.
I also found detailed information that allowed me to see accurately what was taking place throughout 2020 and 2021. I'm not good at finding such things -- this was answered prayer. Particular sources would go on for a while and then fizzle out, and I would discover new ones to replace them. I tried to warn people, but I was either censored online (shadow banned) or people didn't want to hear it in person, for the most part, although there were exceptions. I've not had to retract anything that I said, and the information may have saved a couple of lives.
In 2020 I also reached out to two mainline churches with which I had connections, and I participated with them online during that year. I couldn't bring them to their senses, and didn't try, but I did attempt to introduce a bit of the gospel here and there where I could. It's not something they understood or preached.
But what I witnessed shook me to the core and nothing about this world appears quite the same any longer. My personal experience is similar to what you describe, as are my expectations. I see the end coming and I live accordingly. If I have to die for my faith, so be it; the choices now are clear. God has also been helping me to remember my earlier life -- I asked for that -- and it's nothing to be proud of. This online outreach, well, I don't know. I think I may be learning a few things about how to do it. Perhaps something here will make a difference for someone, if not now then when things get really bad.