Devoted to Fellowship

What will you say when you stand before the judgment seat of God?   For all of my life, when I envisioned this scenario, I unwittingly stood before God as condemned as any human has ever been.   I hate Satan.  I'm terrified of Hell.  I love church.  I am great at ministry.  I can teach any material you hand me to anyone who will listen.  I've said all the prayers.  I've put in all the time.  I've cried all the shameful tears.  I've been on the mission trips, rocked the babies, paid the tithes, held hands of the hurting, wept with the addicts, followed the leaders, read the Bible, bought the books, done the work.   But, my trust was not in the Lord Jesus.   In my mind, for all my life, if given the opportunity to tell God why I deserved to be in Heaven with Him, I would have started every sentence with "I..."   I am a Christian.   I trusted Jesus with my salvation.  I gave my ...

Do not forsake the fellowship... How many times have I, myself, used this verse to admonish a Believer who was not showing up to enough scheduled services each month?  How many times have I wielded this verse against people who believed that they could obey all the church Scriptures just by getting together regularly with fellow Believers and loving each other through life?  For my entire life, I have understood and used this verse to mean, "Don't you dare miss church services!"  It was preached that way.  I was taught that way. And I felt strongly that my understanding of that particular Scripture could help people see the value in what we were doing at church.  Then, one Sunday during a church service, I stood and worshiped with a sweet sister in Christ.  We belted out verses together and raised our hands together.  Over the music, we tried to communicate about an upcoming small group series that my husband and I were leading, but because of the no...

What do I really know about Jesus? Have you ever sat down and tried to have a conversation about the Lord, His church, His Word or His purposes without using sermon illustrations, quoting pastors or talking about other people's wisdom and experiences? Imagine coming into a season of questioning- of wanting to know deep truths no matter what they required of you and realizing how MUCH you knew of popular culture, marketed theology, and the American church, but how LITTLE you actually knew of the Lord Jesus and His heart! That was me.  Sadly and with much conviction, I had followed the crowd for decades in my walk with the Lord.  I didn't know that I was doing it.  I didn't realize I was being a disciple of men, but nonetheless, I found myself struggling to get through a conversation without spouting off a sermon series, quoting a favorite author, or repeating the taglines that were dreamed up behind closed doors in an attempt to bring something new, relevant and powe...

I have believed in Jesus since I was 12 years old.  I feared Him before that, but around that age, I decided that I wanted what my preacher said He was offering.  I raised my hand to tell Jesus that I knew I was a sinner destined for Hell without Him and that I wholeheartedly chose Him over that.  Right then and there, I decided that I needed to be a " good girl " for Jesus. And oh, did I try.  Awkwardly, but fervently, I tried to reject the bad and embrace the good.  This started a decades-long season of chasing a forever moving line that divided " right " and " wrong ." For the next twenty years, I followed along with passion as I learned so many conflicting " truths " about the Bible and how to follow it.  I doubted tongues, I believed in tongues.  I doubted gifts, I embraced gifts.  I watched my mouth religiously, I heard a pastor toss out an "F" bomb in the name of grace and relevance.  I stayed quiet in meetings, I led Bible st...

If you take away all of the activity that makes up your Christian life, who would you be?  I am a mom.  Like most, when I was a young mom trying hard to believe and follow Jesus, I raised my kids "in church." They were in every class because I was in every class.  They were at every service because I was at every service.  They volunteered because I volunteered.  We were a Christian family.  We went to church.  We got there early, stayed late and showed up when nobody else did.  We invited people.  We lamented over lost chances to share Jesus with them when they didn't come.  Our friends were at church.  Our leaders were at church.  Our teachers were at church. It was who we were and what we did.  As my kids grew into their teenage years, I saw "fruit" that made me think all of my church effort had secured my kids' faiths and hearts.  They loved the church programs.  They loved the youth group. They volu...

Has anything changed me as much as the Word of God has? A few years ago, family circumstances shifted dramatically, leaving me looking at my ability to know and understand things in a different way.  For the first time in my life, I had to come to terms with the fact that I am not promised forever to figure things out.  For most of my life, I had been willing to know things on the surface, especially when it came to my faith and theology.  Even when I didn't realize it, I had developed a really dangerous habit of knowing a WHOLE LOT of what good people said about the Lord and a GENERIC LITTLE of what the Bible said about the Lord.  For the better part of twenty years, I have put those two things together to come up with the " WHAT I BELIEVE " part of who I am. Don't get me wrong.  I read my Bible.  A lot.  Over and over.  But, subtly, I allowed what people taught me to direct what I thought about what I was reading.  I wasn't a Spirit-le...

A few years ago, I found myself questioning a lot of things.  Those questions- things I had been able to largely ignore for the bulk of my Christian life by choosing to focus on other things- had me clawing at the foundation of my faith looking for a foothold. After about a decade of turning a blind eye to things that I knew needed my attention and clarity, I had arrived at a time in my faith that required me to know everything and no longer assume a single detail of how to flesh out my walk with Christ Jesus. Questions that had been planted as seeds while my husband and I were on the pastoral staff of a local congregation ten years prior had begun to grow into pesky, strong plants that I could no longer see over while checking the boxes of my Christianity.  Those stubborn questions about "church," tithing, prayers, leadership, spiritual gifts and more all nagged at my spirit for years and years, but when I came to the realization that God had given me the ability to know...