Church is a place where you can go to where your heart should be healed. But what happens when the place and the people harden your heart instead of heal it? Well, this just so happens to be part of my story. (Warning! This will be more of a longer blog. But I do feel as though all that is stated in this is very important in today’s church world.)
As I share this part of my story I would like to go ahead and say that I will not be mentioning names of people nor the name of the church. I will also be leaving out some of the details as they are too personal to share or they were someone else’s story.
I tell this part of my journey not to bad mouth people, but to better educate people that this sort of thing is still happening in the church. And to also tell others that may have gone through something similar how to cope with it and be able to move on.
The story takes place over about a years time. But to save on making everyone read an incredibly long blog, here is what I will say about it all. We started out absolutely loving this church. We felt so loved by everyone that was around us. We felt The Holy Spirit’s presence everywhere. Then everything took a turn for the worse. You could slowly feel the presence of the Holy Spirit slipping out. We weren’t even allowed to say the words Holy Spirit with the fear of offending someone! God was no longer welcome in that church.
So of course you are going to ask yourself, “How can you have church without God?” You can’t. This is where everything started to go very badly. Friendships were lost and broken. Rumors were spread and trust was broken. People only began to care about themselves and not others. People were putting themselves on the throne instead of God. People were wanting to be worshipped instead of God. People began leaving the church and not even looking back. People were also getting kicked out due to nonsensical reasons. Then when tragedy struck for me and my husband, we had a miscarriage, two people in the church cared enough to show us God’s grace and God’s love. The pastor was not one of those people.
Then feeling down in the dumps my husband had a talk with one of the staff members about some things. One of those things being help. We needed help! But instead of that help, my husband was called in the pastor’s office the very next day and was fired. (He was on staff in the worship band). Not only was he fired but we were also kicked out of the church. I’m not going to go into detail as to everything that was said but I will put it this way, it was something that caused us to harden our hearts enough to where we had no interest in going to church for about ten months. Now don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just what was said in that last meeting, but a mixture of things throughout that year.
So what happens when the church hardens your heart? It feels as though it is almost impossible to ever return to a church with the fear of the same thing happening again. To this day my husband and I still have some problems letting people from church in due to this happening to us. We are so scared of it all happening over again. Of letting people in just to be hurt again. But this is where the Lord comes in. This is where we realize that with Him, ANYTHING is possible.
Now I’m not going to lie, it was very hard to return to any church. We wanted to, but we just didn’t feel like we had to for quite awhile. But then one day God opened up our eyes. We were beginning to turn to other forms of comfort instead of seeking the One that is the comforter. God began to show us that the path that we were heading down was a very dangerous and sinful one. We began to feel all of the guilt and anger at ourselves for what we had been doing. We had decided to let the enemy win by not seeking God in our most desperate time of need.
But thanks to God’s grace and forgiveness we have been able to put all of that behind us! Without the power of prayer I don’t know how we would have been able to cope with any of this. But God heard our cry and our pain and felt the hurt in our hearts. So because of God’s amazing love for us we are now attending a church where God’s presence is felt all around. Where the very love that is talked about in God’s Word is lived out by each and every person in that place. Where the church is a people and not a building. God has forgiven us and helped us with the process of healing. We still have a little ways to go, but we are on the right track.
If you or anyone that you know has gone through something similar to ours just remember that God loves you! That nothing you say or do could ever stop Him from caring for you! And though it may be difficult to start going back to church, God has allowed for this to happen so that you may grow more love for Him. And that this can now be apart of your story to maybe help others with one day!
I again did not write this to speak ill of anyone. But rather to tell the raw truth of what is still happening in churches all over world. We think we have done better with following God’s Word, when in all reality, there is always be at least one Pharisee in every church. We must stop letting Satan in and let God take back over!
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