Deep Thoughts......A Crisis of Religion, but Not of Faith.........

If you are a long time reader of my blog, you may remember that for most of our marriage we weren't regular church attendees.  God has always been our constant, and the driving force in our lives, but we didn't attend organized religious services.

There are a whole lot of reasons why we didn't attend regularly, and I won't get into those here, but we never lacked for a close relationship with God, which to my mind is what matters more than anything.

Shortly after we moved down here to KY, The Man's sister lost her husband after a long illness, and his funeral was preached by a hell fire and brimstone preacher who inspired us to begin attending church.  It was wonderful!  Uplifting and inspiring and most Sundays a wonderful jolt to the spirit.

We attended every Sunday until we moved to Montana, and then as soon as we came back we went right back.  I think we only missed two Sundays in over 2 years.....

The last few months however, we began to notice some things that made us increasingly uncomfortable.  Certain things that weren't exactly Biblically correct.  Things that just began to bother us more and more.  Also, after that amount of time attending every Sunday, we began to notice that the sermon was pretty much exactly the same every Sunday.  The same message, and sometimes not a Biblically correct message.  This really began to wear on us.  

We prayed and prayed and we continued to attend, but things just kept getting worse and worse and we felt it was time to leave.

That was about 2 months ago I suppose, and we've tried a couple of different churches since.  We've also missed a few Sundays, not attending anywhere.  We are still praying for God's direction.  We have not found a church home.  We still talk in depth about God as a family every day.  God isn't just on Sunday morning to us.  God is every day, every moment, every second.  His love and His presence permeates every aspect of our lives as it always has.

Church is important, but it absolutely doesn't substitute for that close personal relationship with God.  You can't have a true relationship with Him if you are eating with a spoon everything the preacher is saying on Sunday morning and never learning to feed yourself.  If you don't study the Bible and have deep conversations with others outside of the church, you won't know, or notice if and when your preacher strays from the Word.

I'm so thankful to live in a country where you can own a Bible and can read and study God's word at any time you want.  I have a Bible in the car, at my desk at work, on the bench beside where I sit at the table, and in the bathroom.  God's word is never far away from me and I can read it any time I want.  I can also pray and talk to God at any time.  This is the beautiful thing about a relationship with God.  He is never out of reach!

So we are in search of a church.  And we sort of feel as if we are in a bit of a crisis of religion.

A crisis of religion, but not a crisis of Faith!

Till next time.....

God Bless,