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I love God. Like, really. More than anything else this earth ever possibly have to offer.
Why?
Because of who He is.
Okay. You're probably wondering why the heck I'm talking about this. Aside from feeling a desperate need to shout out who my God is, I've been thinking a LOT about why God is so great and why I've never been comfortable with "church". So, after a reeeaaallly long talk with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
so_out_of_ideas, I'm just gonna come here and talk about what I believe, what I don't believe, and why. It'll probably get really long, so I'm putting it
First of all, I was talking to one of my coworkers today. He's one of those people who's been so wounded by the church that he honestly doesn't care to ever step foot inside an organized church service again. From what I can tell from talking with him, he doesn't have much of a negative opinion towards God, but he certainly doesn't think much of Christianity.
That hurts. I mean, really hurts. My God created us because he wanted to love someone. Not only that, he wanted us to CHOOSE to love him in return. That's why he made us like he did. Now, if I went out Sunday morning, randomly picked one of the manymanymany churches in my town, and sat through a service, d'you know what I'd hear? Condemnation. Judgement. Hell? Oh, yeah. If you don't look like me, act like me, smell like me, then you're obviously not destined to be with God for eternity.
That's not my God.
How do I know? Because my God IS love. Perfect love. And what does that look like? Well, the Bible tells us what love is in 1 Corinthians 13, my favorite book of the whole Bible.
Right now I'm feeling very ticked off at 'church'. Up until recently when I joined my current church, I've always dreaded Sunday morning. Every time I got the chance, I faked being sick, or found some other excuse to stay home. Church was a place where you went to find out what you'd done wrong, where you hung out with a bunch of old people who ate at the potlucks and laughed and gossiped about who was doing what and how they were so going to hell for it. Church was a place where you went to do what was required of you, then go back to living your daily lives the rest of the week. It was all dead. Church life was old, rotten, and decaying. It was the last place I wanted to be. Yeah, I know not all churches are like that, and I know that not everyone participates in the cycle of hypocrisy and judgment. My whole point here isn't to judge anyone.
Anyway. I think that though I've believed in Jesus and God, I haven't honestly had a real relationship with my Savior until like the last couple years. For so long, I can't honestly say that Jesus was my number one priority. I only prayed when I needed something. My Bible sat collecting dust. I went to church. I came home. Nothing changed. There was no life, no evidence of the Creator's work in my life. I sure wasn't happy, though.
The sad thing is, all that time I knew there was a God. I knew the Bible was true. It just wasn't real to me. God felt so distant. And I think that, in part, is something the church is responsible for.
God is love, and he's reaching out to everyone on Earth. The church is supposed to act as his body, to go into the world and shine his light on every single person who's desperate and hungry. But what do we see so very often? We see a church who claims to have seen the light, but acts out in judgment and hypocrisy, too trapped in their own spiritual gluttony, their own little important lives, to do anything for the broken people of the world. They've missed out on the whole message of God. And all the while, they're rattling down the road in some broken little car, heading the total wrong direction and they don't even know it.
I'm torn between feeling angry for the injustice they're bringing to all these people and feeling sad because they don't even know what they're doing. I'm sure they think they're all right. And that in itself is the problem. When someone believes so strongly that they are RIGHT, they won't listen to anyone else's words of correction. Not even God's. Meanwhile, all these people are getting kicked out and wounded. They're seeing a picture of God as a cruel and judgmental deity who cares nothing for them if they're not perfect.
THAT'S NOT MY GOD!!!
My God sent his son to the world. He sent him to save us, to die for sin, to die for sickness, to die for injustice, to die for anything and everything we might ever face in this life. Whatever it is, the blood contract that Jesus signed covers it!
God is a just God. But here's the cool thing about his Justice: MERCY fulfills it! Hell wasn't built for you or me, or for anyone else who's ever sinned in this world. It was built for Satan. When you have an encounter with God's absolute mercy, the justice that was once directed at you can then be redirected to its proper target: Satan. It's not God's will that anyone should perish, as the Bible says. It's his will that we live a full life as his FRIENDS.
I'm sure I'm pretty much a mystery to my coworkers. They act like they expect me to jump down their throats, to condemn them for everything they're doing wrong in their lives. But that's not my job. The only life I have the right to judge is my own. My responsibility is to do my best to let God shine through me, to show them who Jesus is by how I act and how I treat them. I can honestly say I'm not doing that as well as I'd like, but I do know one thing: if I'm willing and open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, God will do what he needs to. He loves these people I work with, even though they're raw and worldly and definitely not perfect. He loves them and he so desperately wants them to KNOW that!
I hate that the church looks the way it does now. While all these people are out wandering through the dark, through the cold, the only light and hope they can see has a big 'members only' sign plastered on the gates.
Just so you know, I'm not anti-church. I KNOW there are good churches out there. My church is an awesome place. Our pastor decided that, no matter what it looks like and no matter what people think of us, he's going to lead us where God wants us to go. People may get mad, people may leave, but that's okay. The Creator can't be fit in a box or in a mold. My God is a great God, and he's a good God. And you know what? He's HAPPY! The last time he honestly got in a bad mood was when he destroyed the earth with a flood. The rainbow stands as his promise to never do that again.
I'm so sick of meeting people who're afraid of him. I hate that my fellow believers have created such a mindset that everyone's scared to death of God. I wonder what would happen if Jesus stepped through the doors of your typical church setting. Would he see the tables filled with money and crap, with people shouting out bargains, cheap prices for selling your sin?
I was rereading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman just a little while ago. In fact, that's one of the things that sparked this whole thing. So, John 4:23-24, Message translation:
It's not about rules, it's not about everybody looking identical. I heard a message a while back, and the pastor was talking about "getting along". So often, "getting along" ends up as, "If you don't look like me, talk like me, act like me, then there's obviously something wrong with you." So, instead of accepting people as the beautiful creations God made them, the church ends up trying to poke and shove them into this mold of what 'true Christianity' is supposed to look like. God made billions of people, and not a single one of them is identical. If Christians can't accept people as who God made them to be, then they're basically saying that God made a mistake in his design.
I refuse to believe that. You are crafted in the image of God. You are his creation and he's already done everything for you, and he'll do it again in a heartbeat if it's what it would take to save you.
I love my God. I know that, compared to a lot of people in this world, I've lived a very sheltered and tame life. In fact, some would probably ask me "Well, what exactly has God ever done for you?" I can't come back with some awe-inspiring tale about him saving me from a life of drugs or from multiple attempted suicides. My story of a life with God is far less dramatic. But I do know this: life without God is meaningless. Life without God isn't life. It's nothing more than existing. Every person on this earth was created with a destiny in God, no matter who they are. My one prayer is that I can be the kind of person who can show people the light and love of God. I don't want to keep it to myself. I want others to know just what kind of God my God is. I want them to see him as the one I know, the one who you don't have to be afraid of. The one you can call on when everything else is dark. He's my everything.
And that's all I have to say, I guess.
1 John 4:8 - God is Love
1 Corinthians 13
John 4 - The Samaritan woman
Why?
Because of who He is.
Okay. You're probably wondering why the heck I'm talking about this. Aside from feeling a desperate need to shout out who my God is, I've been thinking a LOT about why God is so great and why I've never been comfortable with "church". So, after a reeeaaallly long talk with
so_out_of_ideas, I'm just gonna come here and talk about what I believe, what I don't believe, and why. It'll probably get really long, so I'm putting it First of all, I was talking to one of my coworkers today. He's one of those people who's been so wounded by the church that he honestly doesn't care to ever step foot inside an organized church service again. From what I can tell from talking with him, he doesn't have much of a negative opinion towards God, but he certainly doesn't think much of Christianity.
That hurts. I mean, really hurts. My God created us because he wanted to love someone. Not only that, he wanted us to CHOOSE to love him in return. That's why he made us like he did. Now, if I went out Sunday morning, randomly picked one of the manymanymany churches in my town, and sat through a service, d'you know what I'd hear? Condemnation. Judgement. Hell? Oh, yeah. If you don't look like me, act like me, smell like me, then you're obviously not destined to be with God for eternity.
That's not my God.
How do I know? Because my God IS love. Perfect love. And what does that look like? Well, the Bible tells us what love is in 1 Corinthians 13, my favorite book of the whole Bible.
Right now I'm feeling very ticked off at 'church'. Up until recently when I joined my current church, I've always dreaded Sunday morning. Every time I got the chance, I faked being sick, or found some other excuse to stay home. Church was a place where you went to find out what you'd done wrong, where you hung out with a bunch of old people who ate at the potlucks and laughed and gossiped about who was doing what and how they were so going to hell for it. Church was a place where you went to do what was required of you, then go back to living your daily lives the rest of the week. It was all dead. Church life was old, rotten, and decaying. It was the last place I wanted to be. Yeah, I know not all churches are like that, and I know that not everyone participates in the cycle of hypocrisy and judgment. My whole point here isn't to judge anyone.
Anyway. I think that though I've believed in Jesus and God, I haven't honestly had a real relationship with my Savior until like the last couple years. For so long, I can't honestly say that Jesus was my number one priority. I only prayed when I needed something. My Bible sat collecting dust. I went to church. I came home. Nothing changed. There was no life, no evidence of the Creator's work in my life. I sure wasn't happy, though.
The sad thing is, all that time I knew there was a God. I knew the Bible was true. It just wasn't real to me. God felt so distant. And I think that, in part, is something the church is responsible for.
God is love, and he's reaching out to everyone on Earth. The church is supposed to act as his body, to go into the world and shine his light on every single person who's desperate and hungry. But what do we see so very often? We see a church who claims to have seen the light, but acts out in judgment and hypocrisy, too trapped in their own spiritual gluttony, their own little important lives, to do anything for the broken people of the world. They've missed out on the whole message of God. And all the while, they're rattling down the road in some broken little car, heading the total wrong direction and they don't even know it.
I'm torn between feeling angry for the injustice they're bringing to all these people and feeling sad because they don't even know what they're doing. I'm sure they think they're all right. And that in itself is the problem. When someone believes so strongly that they are RIGHT, they won't listen to anyone else's words of correction. Not even God's. Meanwhile, all these people are getting kicked out and wounded. They're seeing a picture of God as a cruel and judgmental deity who cares nothing for them if they're not perfect.
THAT'S NOT MY GOD!!!
My God sent his son to the world. He sent him to save us, to die for sin, to die for sickness, to die for injustice, to die for anything and everything we might ever face in this life. Whatever it is, the blood contract that Jesus signed covers it!
God is a just God. But here's the cool thing about his Justice: MERCY fulfills it! Hell wasn't built for you or me, or for anyone else who's ever sinned in this world. It was built for Satan. When you have an encounter with God's absolute mercy, the justice that was once directed at you can then be redirected to its proper target: Satan. It's not God's will that anyone should perish, as the Bible says. It's his will that we live a full life as his FRIENDS.
I'm sure I'm pretty much a mystery to my coworkers. They act like they expect me to jump down their throats, to condemn them for everything they're doing wrong in their lives. But that's not my job. The only life I have the right to judge is my own. My responsibility is to do my best to let God shine through me, to show them who Jesus is by how I act and how I treat them. I can honestly say I'm not doing that as well as I'd like, but I do know one thing: if I'm willing and open to the leading of the Holy Spirit, God will do what he needs to. He loves these people I work with, even though they're raw and worldly and definitely not perfect. He loves them and he so desperately wants them to KNOW that!
I hate that the church looks the way it does now. While all these people are out wandering through the dark, through the cold, the only light and hope they can see has a big 'members only' sign plastered on the gates.
Just so you know, I'm not anti-church. I KNOW there are good churches out there. My church is an awesome place. Our pastor decided that, no matter what it looks like and no matter what people think of us, he's going to lead us where God wants us to go. People may get mad, people may leave, but that's okay. The Creator can't be fit in a box or in a mold. My God is a great God, and he's a good God. And you know what? He's HAPPY! The last time he honestly got in a bad mood was when he destroyed the earth with a flood. The rainbow stands as his promise to never do that again.
I'm so sick of meeting people who're afraid of him. I hate that my fellow believers have created such a mindset that everyone's scared to death of God. I wonder what would happen if Jesus stepped through the doors of your typical church setting. Would he see the tables filled with money and crap, with people shouting out bargains, cheap prices for selling your sin?
I was rereading the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman just a little while ago. In fact, that's one of the things that sparked this whole thing. So, John 4:23-24, Message translation:
"But the time is coming—it has, in fact, come—when what you're called will not matter and where you go to worship will not matter.
"It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is out looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship. God is sheer being itself—Spirit. Those who worship him must do it out of their very being, their spirits, their true selves, in adoration."
It's not about rules, it's not about everybody looking identical. I heard a message a while back, and the pastor was talking about "getting along". So often, "getting along" ends up as, "If you don't look like me, talk like me, act like me, then there's obviously something wrong with you." So, instead of accepting people as the beautiful creations God made them, the church ends up trying to poke and shove them into this mold of what 'true Christianity' is supposed to look like. God made billions of people, and not a single one of them is identical. If Christians can't accept people as who God made them to be, then they're basically saying that God made a mistake in his design.
I refuse to believe that. You are crafted in the image of God. You are his creation and he's already done everything for you, and he'll do it again in a heartbeat if it's what it would take to save you.
I love my God. I know that, compared to a lot of people in this world, I've lived a very sheltered and tame life. In fact, some would probably ask me "Well, what exactly has God ever done for you?" I can't come back with some awe-inspiring tale about him saving me from a life of drugs or from multiple attempted suicides. My story of a life with God is far less dramatic. But I do know this: life without God is meaningless. Life without God isn't life. It's nothing more than existing. Every person on this earth was created with a destiny in God, no matter who they are. My one prayer is that I can be the kind of person who can show people the light and love of God. I don't want to keep it to myself. I want others to know just what kind of God my God is. I want them to see him as the one I know, the one who you don't have to be afraid of. The one you can call on when everything else is dark. He's my everything.
And that's all I have to say, I guess.
1 John 4:8 - God is Love
1 Corinthians 13
John 4 - The Samaritan woman
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(no subject)
One of the coolest things that's ever happened to me was when I had a friend tell me that when we met, she was really nervous about telling me anything about herself or her life because she expected to be judged and she was really surprised and glad to find that I didn't do that.
This isn't to pat myself on the back. I was just so grateful that I could be that person for however long, because sadly there may not be another. So, keep doing what you're doing with your co-workers, Jess. No matter what anyone else has to say, you're being what they need, even if it's just a little.
(no subject)
Uh. That's kinda rambleish, sorry. I should be in bed.
(no subject)
(no subject)
It took me a long time to realize that. I grew up in the church, one that pretty much like you described and I felt out of place the entire time. I stayed away from God for years because of that feeling. How could God love me when I don't look like these perfect church people?
In high school that changed, a good part of that because my Mom's got a relationship with God and wouldn't give up on me. Now, I love God and I love my new church. But, you're right. I've alot of people who expect me spew hate speech at them. But, that's not6 what God's all about.
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.
(no subject)
(no subject)
I do know that people seem to fear when christians are in their midst. They automatically think that we will judge them and they have to walk on pins and needles.
But you know, the bible does say that the wise man fear God. But I think it is a reverent fear. God is not only love, he is mercy, justice, wrath and holiness. His holiness demands justice but thank God he has mercy as well and thats what he gave us when he gave us Jesus. Throughout the old Testament we see how so many times God had mercy. He is such a great loving and merciful God even when we don't deserve it and even when we arent faithful.
Regarding hell, I don't think that it should be dismissed. Jesus taught about it A LOT and even as a christian, I fear it. But its God's word and he said that he exalts his word above his name. If he said he will do it, he will do it. Therefore, I think it is important that people know about hell too. I also think it is important that people know the entire chracter of God. The reason being that I know that a lot of christians use God's love and grace to get away with sin. They conveniently forget that God is also justice and wrath. What an awesome God we serve!
About the light and salt, I also pray for that. Sometimes in practice we don't feel that we're doing a good job of shining that light, but God will get us there. He's still working on us and as long as we sincerely desire this, God will grant it to us. It conforms to his word and will for us.
(no subject)
(no subject)
Well, in a way he is a dictator but in the positive sense of the word. As Paul said, he's the Potter and we are the clay. He gave every human being his commandments and he expects us to obey them but we don't. So then in the end, whoever disobeys him, he will punish. Not to mention that there is no where that you can go to escape God. That to me symbolizes his absolute authority. Dictatorship can be positive and negative and I see God's absolute authority in that positive light. After all, he created us.
But regarding the "fear" aspect of God, I find that its absolutely gone in today's society. When you go to most churches, you don't hear anything about that type of God. All you hear is God is love. So people don't truly know who God is. As a matter of fact, this girl told me just last week that she can continue fornicating because her God is love and he understands her heart and he'll have mercy. She probably thinks like that because all she hear nowadays about God is that he is love. She don't know anything about his holiness and justice.
Don't get me wrong. I know that God is love. His faithfulness, mercy, blessings, etc demonstrates that vividly. But to quote a minister that I recently listened to: the God of today has been defanged. People don't want to know the Holy God.
See, Jesus came here preaching love and we saw that in his whole earthly life. The way he welcomed every one. But people will read the new testament and miss all those warnings that Jesus gave. And to tell you, some people don't like to read the Old Testament because they say that the God in the Old Testament is different to the God in the New Testament. But that's because somewhere between Jesus performing miracles, they forget all the "if your right hand offend you, cut it off...for it is better for you to enter into life maimed than for your whole body to be thrown into hell" or "don't fear the one who could kill the body...but fear the one who can kill the body and soul."
(no subject)
God woo!
Thank you for sharing.
(no subject)