A Belief That I Have Discarded

For years I was under the delusion that in order to serve God that you had to go to an organized church, that to truly serve God you had to be in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and just about any other time the church doors were open. With this mind set I just about wore myself completly out. Not only was I in church all the time, but because I was on staff I had to be at staff meeting and any other meeting that came up and then one day I read a book by George Barna and another man called "Pagan Christianity" and then I read "The Shack" by Wm P Young and then another book followed called, "So YOu Don't Want To Go To Church Anymore" by Wayne Jacobsen and all of the sudden a light bulb went off so to speak and I relized that I was caught up in religion instead of relationship, that I was so busy about doing work for God, that God was getting left behind, so my husband and I talked and made the decision to leave the world of organized church and to begin pursuing a real intimate relationship with God. Now you may be asking how is that working for you and my answer is, it is working amazingly well. I have more freedom than I had ever experienced in church, I have a deeper more meaningful relationship with God and as a direct result of that I have deeper relationships with my family and my friends. I understand more what it means to be blessed, I understand more the price that Christ paid for me. I have experienced more opportunities to share my relationship with God than I ever did in organized church. I am being the church like Christ intended instead of going to a church built by the hands of man. I know that organized church has it's place, it had it's place in my life at one point, but it is not where I belong at this junction in my life. I belong right where I am at. It is amzing the turns my relationships with people have taken, it was painful at first when people walked out of my life when they couldn't get anything from me any longer, they couldn't ride on my coat tails, it was time for them to stand on their own two feet and not on mine. I love my life and I love God.