Maybe you clicked the title of this blog thinking you would read about how I stepped into an undeground church near the busy streets of China. You could have thought I was going to explain how I stealthily walked into the lions den of some African country. Who knows, it could be that you just plain thought you were going to read a juicy blog about how I did something I wasn’t supposed to do.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong, maybe.
I’ll expound.
Honestly, the musings I’m about to lay out have nothing to do with a place, rather a state of mind.
A state of mind most in the church would likely classify as doubt, crisis in faith, or dare I say it, heretical.
Ever since The Awakening, a World Race conference that took place in Dublin, Ireland shortly before returning home from my 11 month journey, I have been questioning. Everything. The messages messed, I mean muh-essed, with everything I think or believe.
Let me preface some things I know for sure before the judgmental thoughts start to creep in that head:
a. I still believe God is Daddy, Son, and Holy Spirit.
b. I still believe Jesus came as a man, lived a sinless life, died upon a cross, went down, down, down, and rose on the third day.
c. I still believe my God is the same today (and tomorrow) as He was before the foundations were even laid out.
*Oh, and that He is coming back for His Bride [the Church]. Kingdom style.
So now your thinking may be somewhere along these lines, “Ok, well she believes in Jesus. So why does she think people will believe she’s doubting, faithless, or even to go as far as saying a heretic?! I’m confused.”
The things I’m wrestling with go way beyond believing Jesus is my Savior. Thank you Anthony Chapman. He made a statement at the conference that rattled me. He said a lot of things that rattled me, but I wrote this in my journal, so it must have been a much deeper statement for me in that moment. It wasn’t profound in any way. It was more of the lightbulb-DUH! kind of moments.
“Paul made a statement in the book of Romans [12.2] that we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, but we have been “raised” in a tradition that tells us what to think instead of teaching us how to think. And this is how we get boxed in. The important thing is not knowing what we believe, because Scripture is not about what we believe, but about WHO we believe. And when we start to believe the Who, it brings about opportunity to change the what.”
And this is why I’m probably walking into illegal territory. This is why some may think I’m a heretic, because a heretic is a person who holds an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted. And that’s just it. I’m starting to believe things contrary to what has been taught in the church for hundreds of years. I’m starting to realize that for too long I’ve been eating up man-made messages with a spoon rather than being renewed on my own. I’ve been letting people think for me.
I’ve been on this journey with God for almost 5 years and it has always been about fighting for what the Bible says. Even a year ago I would have fought tooth-and-nail with a person on the issues of the Holy standards of the Bible. Shout out to Matthew Rock on this one. I was fuming when I read that he considered too much focus on the Bible as bibliolatry, meaning the worship of the Bible. Some of you reading this now are probably fuming. I’m OK with that. I was when I was first introduced to this way of thinking.
The basic premise for his blog was all to say… Jesus is the Word. Not the Bible.
I’m realizing, he may have been on to something. I guess that causes me a need to repent, hmm.
Our focus, I believe, has shifted. Like Mr. Chapman pointed out, “we too often try to understand who Jesus is through the eyes of Paul, when really, we should be trying to understand the life of Paul through the eyes of Jesus.”
(Please hear my heart. I’m not refusing the bible or disagreeing with it. I read it. I love it. It speaks to me. I believe it to be Truth. And it’s a beautiful testimony of who God is and the Kingdom in which I belong to.)
It’s just that I’m finding out that the main thing these days, sadly, is not really kept the main thing. We focus so much on the do’s and the dont’s, the wrong and the right, that we miss it. We miss Jesus. We miss what the Kingdom is really all about.
I’m sick of the formulas. The agendas. Numbers in the seats. How many we can “get saved.” Cost of living in the Kingdom. And blah, blah-blah, blah-blah, blah-blah.
Cut the crap. Who is Jesus?
Uh-oh. I probably went to far. Another reason why I’m floating on a dangerous line… because I don’t care anymore!
And so this is where I’m at. I really don’t have an answer, but what I am sure of is that not knowing is causing me to seek. Not seeking someone else’s findings or someone elses’ story or how God moved in somebody else’s life.
And isn’t that what it’s really all about?
Because when we start to seek after the Who, instead of the what, isn’t it then that we start to look more like that thing in which we are chasing.
“You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you
possess
eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”- Jesus
“The bible should not, will not, and cannot be a fourth part of the Trinity.”- Matthew Rock
And so, this is a cheers. To my doubt, faith, and opinions that don’t fit in with the crowd.
