It has been quite some time since I have blogged. As you can see I have removed everything that was previously posted on my blog and retreated into a dark silence. While I was there, in silence, and at times confusion, God has been dealing with my heart. Some how, some way God manages to take all of my confusion, all of my anger and all of my why’s and use them for His glory. I am not sure how or what triggered my decent into silence, but I have my suspicions.
I grew up in a family that was dysfunctional. One of my sisters and I joke now that our family put the FUN in dysfunctional. The reality is, is that my extended family, the one I was born into, is broken. That brokenness remained even after I became a believer. I was being made whole, but my extended family members were not. While I was being made whole, I had not yet developed the skills needed to interact with them. As a new believer I was quite obnoxious. I was constantly quoting the bible AT them, refusing to associate with them because of their sin and when I did interact with them I believed that in order to be a good witness I needed to take whatever abuse was heaped on me without a word.
The churches I attended early on did not do a very good job preparing me on how to interact with my family, after Christ. In fact, they encouraged me to cling to them, the church body, as my new “real” family and shun my extended family, because after all, they are/were sinners.
The more I became involved in the church, the more isolated from the real world I became. Unbeknownst to my naïve heart, the church is full of sinners too. There are people in the church who are actively involved in their sin and doing absolutely nothing about it. There are also wolves. Those are the folks who can speak as Christians, act as Christians, but who are not Christians and who are looking for weak or naïve Christians (like I was) to take advantage of.
Enter, our former Pastor.
To be honest I am not sure where he falls on the spiritual spectrum, and it is not really my place to say. I can only speak from my own experience with him and from what I experienced; I still believe he is a wolf, patiently awaiting his next victim. When the reality of the situation was thrust upon me in a hotel room in Arkansas where I was supposed to be getting training to become a biblical counselor, I realized that something was terribly wrong, with me, my marriage, my “brand” of Christianity and our church.
The other men who were in leadership were EIT’s as I like to call them, but actually Elders in training. The previous Pastor did not like sharing the mantle of authority with anyone else, but after several years, a church split and many conversations with me and his wife he finally agreed. The EIT’s slowly began to realize what had happened to me and as I began to be honest about what happened between me and my former pastor the strangest thing happened.
They believed me.
My former pastor told me if I ever told anyone how he related to me and how inappropriate our relationship had become everyone would side with him and I would be shunned from the only community I knew. It made sense. Most women in my situation are cast off like so much garbage when an inappropriate relationship with someone in leadership is revealed. My surprise at their support was evident, my gratefulness ran deep.
However, the wounds left from that encounter with my former pastor, have taken many years to heal, just when I think that the last one has scabbed over and on its way to complete healing, something rips off the scab to reveal that there is still a wound that needs a healing balm just beneath the surface of dried and crusted blood.
As a result I no longer trust people the way I once did. As a result I am skittish and tend to be hot and cold at church, and with the relationships I need to develop there. As a result I become angry with God and question why He would allow me to go through THAT particular trial.
I know why THAT trial was necessary.
God wanted me to realize just how hard my heart had become from the day He softened and opened it. I had forgotten how precious His grace was to me, and that it was freely available for everyone. I had forgotten that Jesus came for sinners like me, and like Paul I should have boldly proclaimed I am a chief sinner. Somehow I began to think that I was better than other people because my sins were not as BIG as other people’s sins. I had forgotten that all sins are detestable to God.
I had become a Pharisee.
It has been a long road from the realization that I was a sinner and could do NOTHING to save myself from the wrath of God that was surely being stored up for me, to somehow believing if I crossed enough t’s and dotted enough i’s my miserable efforts would please God. Somewhere along the line as I smugly made my check lists of do’s and do not’s I began to pity those who were not like me, those poor miserable souls who could not get their act together and live their lives RIGHT. As if somehow I had figured out the formula to pleasing the Almighty.
What a fool I was.
He has used all of the events of my life to humble me and to test me and to know what was in my heart and to see if I would keep His commandments or not. (Deuteronomy 8:2) Sometimes like the Israelites, I have wandered in circles and made idols for myself, sometimes I have demanded food, or meat or water, sometimes I have pretended I could not hear Him at all, but He has proven to me over and over that He is a FAITHFUL God, who pursues His people.
The lesson learned for me, during my own personal wilderness was that I am to love.
PERIOD.
To love without exception, to love completely, to love as He loves and let HIM deal with those wandering hearts. Am I ever supposed to confront, to speak of sin to correct my fellow traveler? Of course I am, but that blog is for another day… for toady I leave you with the verse that struck my heart on Sunday as our current pastor exposits the book of Acts.
“And he said to them, You yourselves are aware how it is not lawful or permissible for a Jew to keep company with or to visit or [even] to come near or to speak first to anyone of another nationality, but God has shown and taught me by words that I should not call any human being common or unhallowed or [ceremonially] unclean.” Acts 10:28
Let your LOVE for Him move you with compassion and love as He loved.
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