The Battle and It's Wounded Soldiers

Sometimes people are so convinced that if you're not in a church that you are somehow in retreat, but that's not what I am finding among the believers that I know (those who don't belong to an Institutional Church).

Yes, there are many wounded soldiers and sadly most of them have been wounded by those we thought were on the same team. Is there any other religion that shoots it's own soldiers when they're down, than Christianity?

There's a battle raging within Christianity today and it is crippling the momentum that should be advancing on the field. Christianity has become Churchianity in many places all over the world and their focus left Christ a long time ago. Now our wounded soldiers are having to deal with how to be strategically wise in order to protect themselves and their loved ones from the very 'brethren' we fought alongside for so many years.

I've never served in the military, but I've read and studied enough to know that not every branch serves in the same capacity. Each one specializes in a specific area and if each branch could work together in supporting one another we can become quite powerful..."to the pulling down of strongholds" once again. But somewhere along the way they forgot about pulling down strongholds and they are more concerned with recruiting people into their branches to just increase numbers. 

I remember meeting with a recruiter for the Air Force when I was 18 years old. I wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force. The recruiter gave me all the information, but asked me to be sure this was the branch I really wanted to be a part of. There are other branches I could have chosen and I still would have been on the same team, The United States of America. 

Now that I think about it, you don't have to be in any military branch in order to be on this team, even the civilians are still on the same team and our taxes pay for those soldiers. We all need one another.

I try to think about this in terms of my faith and the fellowships we all form in our own towns. We each have a function and God will place us where He wants us. There are also wounded soldiers who have been inflicted great harm at the hands of other soldiers and some abusive leaders have misused their positions to punish unjustly. There is corruption all around us and it has been said many times that an outside enemy doesn't have the power to destroy us, the power to destroy comes from within it's own department.

We each have a function and we need to discover what that is through God's Spirit guiding us. Maybe you feel like you are a wounded soldier never able to get back in the battle...but may I remind you of something the apostle Paul said? He said,

 "Love never ends". {1 Corinthians 13} 

The command to love remains steadfast which is where we can be of use in this multifaceted ministry of reconciliation. Even the military hospitals have doctors, nurses, and staff to help the wounded to heal...they're still all a part of the progress of defending freedom.

If God reveals to you that you have wounded one of our own, could you seek Him in depth on how you can reconcile? Even if you agree to disagree, can it be done in love and through peace? Let's remain linked arm in arm, advancing on the field in the victory that has already been given to us through Christ.

The freedom in Him to love one another and help spread the Gospel.. Christ came to set us free.

~Lisa

Where My Walkabout with God Takes Me

Many of my online friends ask me about how we fellowship since we don't belong to a local building most people call 'church'. When God called us out of the 'church' He showed us what 'church' really was and how much freedom we really have in choosing where to fellowship and with whom.

It wasn't a denomination that established the church, it was Jesus Christ and He established that within the people. As a matter of fact, the word 'church' wasn't the original context of what He was referring to. Jesus called it the ekklesia, which is the Body of Christ, the people. He is very clear as to where the Temple is..we are the temple of the Holy Ghost.

He gives us the freedom to select where to gather and with who to gather with. For our family, we saw a need within ourselves and it was God who was revealing that to us. 

{The need was for simplicity}

Our lives were so wrapped up in full time ministry that we didn't have time for each other, nor for helping those who would call late at night or stop by with a crisis in the middle of the day. We had become too busy to serve and we cringed at having to ask people to make an appointment when they were experiencing tragic turmoil in their lives. When we followed God by faith to leave the church we were in, He revealed to us a group of wounded people that may never go back to a church ever again.

{Christians wounded by other Christians}

We have heard it before... "Well, they need to get over it and go back."

I just can't begin to tell you how extremely hurtful that kind of statement is to a person who has been deeply wounded by a group of believers. A local pastor took notice of this group of people over the last several years and commented to me about the ministry God put into our laps. He shared with me how so many times people would try coming to his church and testify of the pain caused by churches and pastors. It grieves him so much to see them hurting, but because of the past hurt being inflicted by people who call themselves 'pastor', these people were far more reluctant to ever trust the title ever again. He shared with me that he saw the need for our ministry to remain out of the box, away from titles, so that God could reach out through us to help these wounded families. Families looking for the same thing..simplicity.

For many people, church has become so large that they simply can't keep up with the amount of activities and meetings, let alone the financial burden a large church puts on the people. More often than not, the few who do serve became laden with a yoke they were not meant to bear alone. They become exhausted in their service, feel obligated to keep serving, afraid to step down, and eventually they crash. They can't even walk away, because they are so crushed under the weight that all they can do is crawl away. They feel utterly defeated. Serving God should not be like this. These are among some of the people we fellowship with. 

Sometimes we gather in our home and sometimes in others. Sometimes it's over dinner at a local restaurant or coffee at a local cafe. It doesn't matter where you gather, the point is to be together to encourage one another in the faith. My walkabout with God takes me wherever His Spirit guides me. He guides my husband, my family, and our friends all over the city and even on the internet to help lift up the fallen, the exhausted, and the wounded.

How shall the Body effectively invite others to believe, if we're too busy crushing our own with such burdens? How can we be an influence in the community when we're leaving our own kicked to the curb and dare tell them to 'just get over it'?

If the Body you gather with has wounded people fleeing from your churches, it's time to stop right there and pay attention to what's going on. How can we possibly be a Light to the unbelieving world when our own are lost and dying under the rubble? That's where our walkabout with God is taking us. To help dig them out, encourage them, support them, feed them, and see them heal.

Lisa