LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Discovering The Deep Growth In The Lord
In prayer this morning, I asked about the way people seem to question my own growth in the Lord, and how folks who have been Christians longer than I have seem to think I am special or something. There is so much superstitious mysticism going around, and this is a normal part of the human condition, people often get the wrong impressions about what Christian spirituality is, and thus many are misled. The Holy Spirit asked me to start a thread of this nature, so I am, but I am asking others of you to share your experiences of how you worked in the Word of God, and as much as you are able to share the kinds of prayers you prayed, if not the personal reasons you needed to, so that others might learn how to grow in Christ and discover for themselves a proper relationship in Him.
First of all, I went for over 15 years, I think, without a single Christian making any effort to witness to me. These were the years I spent in Colorado, and the first five or six years I lived on the east coast. I was between the years of my late 20's and my early 40's. Sobering, isn't it... So all I had to go on were negative impressions picked up on the street from the unbelievers in my normal social circle, and a couple of truly unpleasant encounters as I blundered about trying to find a church in 1999. This left me with a very hostile image of Christianity in general and a flat refusal to depend on any one person or church to teach me about God. For these reasons, it wasn't entirely the person who led me to Christ, it was a joint effort between himself and the Holy Spirit. That much was obvious from me from the first time he (successfully) confronted me with Christianity in 2003.
This was the basis of a very important decision I made as I considered the possibility that there might be some truth to this claim that the only way to find the truth about God is through Jesus Christ. I further reasoned that the only way to get to the bottom of the truth about Jesus Christ was through the Bible. Since people say all sorts of conflicting things about the Bible, the only thing I was willing to do was read it for myself, and find out for myself what this was all about. I did ask Jonathan a lot of questions, and he came up with a lot of good answers (he's a lot like Mattfivefour in a lot of ways). The most important thing Jonathan was though, was that he was candid. If he hadn't done something well, he admitted it. If something unexpected came through in his walk with Jesus Christ, he admitted the times of uncertainty with a quiet honesty. That won my trust.
Jonathan is a married man, and our deep teacher/student friendship attracted a lot of attention and the associated gossip, so our contact was limited to the job site alone. He didn't want my e-mail address, and we both agreed to not exchange phone numbers. He lives and goes to church about 50 miles from where I live, so I didn't go to his church (just too far to drive after an exhausting workweek). So when my arthritis ended my time at that job, we lost contact, and it was up to me to stand without his critical support.
I decided to keep a very conservative approach to discovering the truth about God, and over a period of several years, I explored the whole Bible a little at a time. I tried different churches around town; sometimes the preaching good, other times it didn't mean much, but it was the people in the pews who made me uncomfortable. I was always outnumbered at Sunday School, and almost never could get my questions out, and no one was willing to spend time with me, helping me to grow in the Lord, so I watched a lot of TV and read a lot of books. Since I wasn't making a lot of money, and wasn't meeting "prince charming" or any of that, prosperity preaching didn't mean much to me, but discussions about how Jesus Christ really is did. I came to depend on Scripture alone to define what doctrine should be, and on some of the men I consider very good preachers to explain how to develop a relationship with God. through it all, I maintained my commitment to look to the Bible for insights on how to cope with life storms, and I never assumed I know or should have known what I was doing. Instead I confessed freely in prayer that I didn't have the faintest idea what right was supposed to be, and I asked God for His insight. He gave of His wisdom freely, exactly as Scripture said He would.
In the struggles I endured with spiritual warfare, I encountered the most confusion. There was tons of really bad advice, endless chatter about demons and terrifying years of trial and error. To make a long story short, I finally learned to depend on Scripture alone, as it became more and more clear that any sort of rituals, anointing oils and investigation beyond the confines of the Bible itself about the nature of demons was a waste of time at best and backfired at worst... So the longer I did these things, the more conservative I became, and I came to depend heavily on daily prayer.
By living as best I could according to the Bible, and praying to the Lord when I couldn't make the grade, I came to recognize who was speaking the truth about Jesus Christ, and who was a fake and, most importantly, how to tell the difference. After about three or four years of this sort of homework, I could tell the difference between Joel Osteen and TD Jakes, between Bob Larson or Todd Bentley and David Wilkerson and why.
So again I say, I am not "all that", I do not have some mystical anointing reserved for "special" people. I am quite ordinary. The specialness is in the Word Of God and in God Himself. I think every one of the men we value as leaders and teachers at this forum and anywhere else would say it takes some effort in reading the Word, in prayer and in perseverance to gain maturity in Christ, but that is all it takes. You don't have to be especially smart, you don't have to be "qualified" for some exclusive gift, and some people are NOT just naturally "all that". It simply doesn't work that way.
I hope this helps.
Reply With Quote
for strength 
Originally Posted by peacebringer
------ 
------ 
Bookmarks