Not sure I should have attended?
Attend church because the Spirit is calling you to. You search for a church—a community of believers that you feel you should attend. On Sunday you attend the church you believe the Spirit guided you to. You enter the narthex, and the greeter greets you with a welcome, a small gift that tells you about the church and its activities. As you enter the sanctuary everyone is friendly, welcoming, full of good cheer with huge smiles and warm embraces. Finally, the service begins: You are greeted with a mini concert that is called worship and the music is so loud you wish you had a set of ear plugs to dull the bone rattling base and precision instrument drumming. Finally, the pastor steps up and welcomes everyone, says a prayer, and begins the sermon for the week. Today’s sermon was on the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. A wonderful story of love, inspiration, redemption and how everyone should try to live like Jesus and his apostles and even a few modern-day pastors and evangelists. You feel great with the experience and relax, finally thanking the Lord for directing you this church when suddenly, the pastor tells everyone that the story can be taken in many ways depending on how you view the story and how you understand the message of the gospel. All if a sudden, you think wow, this is all on me, on what I personally believe is true or not; what I understand to story to mean, how I perceive the gospel message? You begin to wonder did the Lord send me here or did I want to attend a church that I felt comfortable with? And what the pastor said was not truly biblical and not Christian thinking at all. You decide to return next Sunday and see if you misunderstood the pastors meaning. You prayed about the experience and no message was received to deter you from attending again. Next Sunday you returned to church and the greeting was the same as last Sunday with a few welcoming your return. Once again, the same mini concert was presented and the pastor took the stage, said a prayer, and began the sermon. This Sunday the sermon focused on Colossians chapter two and the pastor seemed to be speaking from the heart because the sermon was powerful and personal until the pastor once again said depending on how you understand this message and how you personally interpret it because everyone understands things differently.
You leave the church feeling that you were misled and that there was no way the Lord would have you attend this church and listen to someone who fails to understand that the message means the same to all who believe. There is only one faith, one God, one way to eternal life, not twenty, hundreds, thousands, or millions—just one. You are now disillusioned and decide not to return to that church. You are struggling with the fact you believed the Lord sent you to that church, to become a part of it, and that church had to be a good one since the Lord encouraged you to attend.
I have no idea if you, the reader, have had an experience like this, and I would ask you to consider the possibility that the Lord sent you there not just for yourself, but for someone else. You see, the pastor’s message isn’t entirely wrong or right, it was meant to lesson controversy and divisiveness within the congregation even as the pastor set the stage for disagreements and disunity. Regardless, consider once again that the reason you were sent there was more of a mission to rescue someone or someone’s. You see, when God talks to us it is very seldom about self but always about His will being done. We have flowers of Christ Jesus need to pull ourselves out of the picture and understand that God has a purpose for us to assist Him in helping others. There are many people in every congregation that are not true believers, and every church is a mission field to reach the lost.
God bless.
Mike
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