Hello everyone!
I hope that you have been enjoying my "Off the Scale" series so far and we are moving ever onwards through our thirties with a view to continue until at least 100!
Today, however, and because it's been such a long time, I just wanted to post a really heartfelt post on some of the stuff that caused me to leave !Audacious Church...
There's a Message in my Mess
First off, I'm not here to engage in a personal attack against this particular church as enough time having gone by has helped me to realise that this is not, nor could it ever be a home for me again.
Too many things went wrong for me there to return to this particular environment.
Ever.
Period.
I have had to wade through a bog of unforgiveness and hurt that was caused to me by some of the people there. But such is life.
People are careless.
People hurt people.
Christian people hurt people.
That's a lesson I found out the hard way as living out the life I lived these past few years has caused me to seek God and to find such truth in Jesus' words when He was telling the Pharisees that only the sick need a doctor: -
Jesus left that place, and as he walked along, he saw a tax collector, named Matthew, sitting in his office. He said to him, “Follow me.” Matthew got up and followed him. While Jesus was having a meal in Matthew's house, many tax collectors and other outcasts came and joined Jesus and his disciples at the table. Some Pharisees saw this and asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such people?” Jesus heard them and answered, “People who are well do not need a doctor, but only those who are sick. Go and find out what is meant by the scripture that says: ‘It is kindness that I want, not animal sacrifices.’ I have not come to call respectable people, but outcasts.”
This particular passage found in Matthew 9:9-12 always stands out for me, more so after the psychological and emotional trauma I underwent at the last church I went to.
I'm not embellishing, nor am I exaggerating.
It's a fact. I deal in facts.
I was let down by leadership and I was let down by people I thought were friends.
These are all facts.
But, again, I'm not here to engage in an online attack. I will have to give account for everything I say so let me talk about what this experience taught me.
This experience taught me to sacrifice my pride if I wanted to experience healing.
This experience taught me to sacrifice self if I wanted to experience freedom.
This experience taught me that I just need to let it go, keep letting it go and move forwards in order to gain the ground that God means for me to gain in this life.
Moving Forward, Not Looking Back
My eyes are looking forward, so I need to keep moving forward.
It has not come easy.
It has come at the very high price of church attendance and the wilful sacrificing of my own personal pride this year. I have struggled with wanting to enact violence (as in smack a few people upside the head) on a few people from time to time that I used to know from there.
"They crossed me. Nobody crosses me!"
That was my inner argument that my pride tried, and admittedly tries to remind me about. But every day I have to remind myself that I am to forgive them just as much as I have been forgiven; totally.
It's not easy, nobody ever said it would be easy for me. Forgiveness is not easy. If I want to achieve my full potential then I need to remember to exercise grace where grace was shown to me from the get go.
Long-time readers would know that there was a girl there I fell hopelessly in love with when I was at !Audacious, but was caught like a deer in a trap unable to do anything about it. Then my heart was ripped into two as I found out she was already seeing somebody.
It happens. I cannot control that. I never could.
I did the best that I possibly could with the feelings that I held for her (and still hold to this day, if I am honest) but it never worked out.
That's my past, it's a broken shambles of a mess but, thank God, I know that it's forgiven in Jesus.
Jesus is all I need right now.
Jesus is all I want right now.
Jesus is all I live for right now.
A Medicated Mess, or A Dedicated Message?
I'm a broken, medicated person who struggles with self-confidence more times than he would like to admit, but you know what? Jesus loves me.
That's right, I said Jesus loves me.
I can't spend my life on past ruminations of things, like all of this, that didn't work out. I instead need to look ahead to the bright things that are ahead of me. This is why I'm reminded of scripture like Philippians 3:12-14 because I need my Bible right now to help me through this mess seeing as God isn't taking me out of it.
I do not claim that I have already succeeded or have already become perfect. I keep striving to win the prize for which Christ Jesus has already won me to himself. Of course, my friends, I really do not think that I have already won it; the one thing I do, however, is to forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. So I run straight toward the goal in order to win the prize, which is God's call through Christ Jesus to the life above.
Sometimes, you have to remember that the only way out... is through!
Sure, people have let me down. That's what people do.
That's what Christian people do.
We are not perfect. Nobody is.
Only Jesus.
Final Thought
The amount of forgiveness I have had to draw out, has not been humanly possible without a recognition of the fact that I am saved by Christ's finished work on the cross.
The fact that I can still write like this, even though it feels like my insides are being twisted inside out shows me that maybe, just maybe, I'm closer on this journey to grace and mercy than I ever thought possible.
Until next time...
===TLP===
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