Maybe the church has become bewildering to you. Leaders you trusted and people you respected are acting in ways that do not reflect who Jesus is, nor what they profess to believe. They have turned on anyone among them who appears to threaten the status quo. What is going on?
All my life, I had been deceived by Good Christian appearances. Then, when pummeled and guilted to choose loyalty to a church system above all else, I saw.
When you earnestly seek to do what’s right, inside a system you do not recognize as broken, you’re asking to be blindsided. When you implicitly trust leaders who depend on the system for power, image and funds, you’re asking to be betrayed. Not seeing what you need to see, you won’t have a clue what’s going on.
What do you do when you feel angry, impotent and stuck, in a place where evil seems invincible and justice, impossible? Be still? Wait patiently? Psalm 37:7 may seem like a call to “just relax.” Instead it affirms and encourages struggle – struggle to resist taking matters into your own hands, struggle to cooperate with Christ to birth deliverance and life.
Choosing to go with God where my church culture had forbidden, I had no clue how much seeing and grieving lay ahead. And how very much love and life.
Even in suffering, even in exile, may you find growing within you: A life energetic and blazing with holiness, conceived by God himself. Life healed and whole. Laughter and singing. Genuine faith proved genuine. Living hope. One-anothering love. A future that starts now.
"I let go of all I have just to have all of You." - A song that has encouraged me in the night, "Worth It All," Meredith Andrews
"The narrow path with Jesus for me has been exhilarating, but also lonely and difficult," wrote my new friend.