Ok, so recently I posted that I had given in the Jesus issue and decided to try acceptance and becoming a “real” Christian. Also, I started going to a Bible study at my church. I’ve gone twice and haven’t felt comfortable. I thought the lovely people in my last church were conservative (I eventually befriended and stopped judging them), but they were relatively easy-going compared to these ladies. Also, the study itself is just really blowing apart the text of the Bible, no practical application or real-life stories, just “WHAT DOES IT SAY”, almost like a class you’d take in school.
Not really what I was looking for.
Last week we went back to our former church and were just swept up in the love of people hugging and kissing us, telling how much they missed us.
To be frank with you, I have NEVER felt this kind of warmth from people who were not relatives in my life (and honestly, not from some relatives at all). I was overwhelmed. This week, I was determined to keep up my weekly path and go to church. The sermon was about this book, “Just Walk Across the Room”. This annoyed me because several growth groups in the church are going through the books, if you’d want to attend, you just pay for the book and they assign you to a group at your convenience. The book is about evangelizing – that is, how to evangelize to people you do and do not know.
Now when you have as tenuous a hold on Jesus as I do, and then the pastor asks for you to complete a card asking “what did the person who saved you do”, what you really want to do is write is that you met God 15 years on a path that was founded by a Muslim (although it’s not a Muslim path) and that Christianity was one of many ways to God. That you’ve lost touch with the person who “brought” you to God, because she really didn’t, you were asking God to come to you and He did. That you’ve communed with Him, laughed with Him, been comforted by Him, been rescued countless times from despair, depression, financial ruin, injury, child health issues and even one time death, that He is already your all in all and has saved your soul despite the fact that you have no idea who Jesus is and you keep waiting for him to show but he never does.
It was then, in the middle of this, that I realized that Christianity – which so recently brought me a heart beat away from God – was now AGAIN pushing me away. Where is the Lord who stood in the corner with me when I accepted my daughter’s diagnosis of Down syndrome? Who showered me with His Essence of Comfort (His Holy Spirit, I believe) while coping wit the severity of Mom’s Alzheimers, who miraculously put mortgage money in our pockets for 6 months when we could not sell our old house, who blessed Amelia with a heart disorder that healed itself, who pulled me back from a stroke so severe the doctor said it was a “miracle” I had no permanent damage… Oh, I could go on and on.
I am not going to attend next Sunday because I cannot walk across the room to talk about Jesus, and I don’t want to be preached to about it. I can tell people all the time what my God, my Creator has done for me, I enjoy talking about it. But I’ve been put off again by Christians and it’s painful.
I don’t know if I should go to the Bible study. It feels like I shouldn’t. I’ll let you know what I decide.