“Do you take your kids to church?”
My breath stopped as I scrambled for an answer. I was standing in the pet store chatting with a very nice former graphic designer who had just helped me obtain a photo of a kitty for my three-year-old. She had wandered from our discussion about our job commonalities into a conversation about her two grown children, and suddenly “church” was on the table.
“That’s my one regret,” she went on. “I only took them sporadically, and now they don’t even believe in God.”
She couldn’t know that as I was en route to the store, I had been asking God about church, and about being godly and about how prone I am to need “religious” habits in order to feel that I was on good terms with Him. I’d been agonizing over directions in a strange city, at the same time wondering again if He is really enough, if there is a Law that He means for me to be keeping that I am not keeping.
“Is it enough for me to know You?” I asked, and then struggling with the sense that it wasn’t. That on the other side of all of this “knowing Him” there is some sort of rule or action required of me to prove that I know Him.
I stuttered out an answer about how I’d been raised in a fundamentalist Bible culture and had to leave church years ago in order to find God.
She looked at me sympathetically. “It’s ’cause they’re all hypocrites, isn’t it? You need to try a non-denominational church. They have children’s programs and everything.”
He’s been telling me to listen lately. Not to answer everything or run the conversations – just to listen. And as I listened to her and to her heart as she told me how “it’s just all love and helping one another that gets us to God, you know” my heart broke because I know that just “giving it forward” isn’t enough, that really, it is just Jesus in us, making up the difference.
Tears choked my throat. I said His name to her. She didn’t hear me. She had it figured out. She believed in God, and she was good, and that was enough for her now.
I don’t know how to live a life of faith well, but dear God, may I never, ever, ever have it all figured out enough that I can’t hear “Jesus.”
You know, I’ve been wrestling with some of the same things and God’s been teaching me something similar.
We’ve been through some major stuff with our church over the past year and decided to leave a certain body of believers. A body of believers that I’d done life with for 14 years and Josh had been apart of his entire life. A church body that has been a great blessing in many ways over the years. And even though we left a certain four walls, there are friendships that extend beyond that that we’ll never lose. But even so, there’s been some tearing and some healing.
I’m not cynical though about the church. I’ve been through enough church messes to know we’re just all messed up people who need Jesus and to be changed by Him. That part of this messy community life is part of His plan. How he grows and shapes us. That said, there are degrees of spiritual health and some churches are more healthy than others.
Ironically, though, the church we’ve been visiting since July has been used in part of some healing. And part of what you share here resonates with me in what was shared in the sermon at church even today. That we need Jesus and redemption and forgiveness everyday and we never get over that. That we don’t become Christians and leave the Gospel behind and replace it with discipleship habits, church membership, and doing good. That the battle cry for freedom that Paul writes about in Galatians is not “Jesus plus something else.” Not “Jesus plus law.” But just Jesus.
Love your heart Kelly, as you seek to walk this life of faith out.
Powerful question… we did take our children to church most every time the doors were open… they listened to good old southern gospel music every Saturday night before they fell asleep. They learned to pray and ask God to bless their meals, or their family. It is all a part of training them the way they should go so they don’t depart from it. That I do believe, they might stray and walk away for a while but will always return. Now I get the privilege of teaching the grand children. When they say “do we have to bless our meal?” I return to them with a question, “are you grateful, are you thankful… do you appreciate good things?” it answers the questions. I was not raised in the church. So when I did find ‘God’ it was powerful and life changing. My husband has said to me, “I wish I had a testimony like yours… and I would say back to him, I wish I had a family like yours.” Family is far more important than testimony.