Switching from a Purpose Driven church with entertainment to a bible teaching church may have a few effects, one of which initially is boredom. This may seem unholy and wrong to admit, but it has happened. We felt it in our house. A dry feeling. But like eating healthy food for once as a normal way of life rather than just once in a while, old habits are hard to break.
Exercise and eating healthy will be difficult for someone coming from terrible habits. We want to drift back to the soda, we want to taste the sugary sweet candy. We want to have french fries and greasy hamburgers with lots of cheese. Why? We’re addicted. What do bad eating and exercise habits get us? Diabetes, heart problems, early death. We become fat and unable to enjoy life.
This is what happened to us at the previous church. We enjoyed a LOT of cool programs. Our kids were entertained. We felt we were growing in the faith. Yes, we did grow, but looking back, the times we did grow were when we insisted to study the bible verse by verse in small group. There were some messages by the pastors that carried truth, so we did learn from those. However, much was social, much was wrong teaching. We ignored the problems for a while. It caught up to us. We began to see the problems.
When we opened our ears and looked around, we heard the pastors preaching things that were not biblical. Suddenly, the candy coating didn’t feel good anymore. We realized the illness in our faith. We were not being fed often enough. Yes, there was service, we were served in many ways. But the teaching was in error just as often as it was in truth. We allowed the error to go on when we were blind to it, but once we saw it we realized we had to escape.
We eventually landed in a church where the bible is preached verse by verse. We started out with some initial joy, because our worries about the former church were confirmed. Still, we missed some of the trappings. We missed the social time, many people were new to us. We missed the upbeat music a great deal. Still, the true spiritual food was making us feel better because our spiritual bodies were getting the right nutrition. Now my children recognize the former church for what it is, and they do not want to go back to the candy. We don’t either.
Of course, we listen and are very careful, we do not want to believe the pastor without checking things out. It’s kind of like reading the labels. We want to know what’s going on at the church, what they are truly about. Is the spiritual food healthy and true? If it is, then we will see growth and not experience the physical illness. The hard work put in (not works for salvation mind you, but the study of God’s word and prayer, the service to the body, and the support of those who go out and preach to others…or even maybe us going out some day when we’re prepared…these things are the hard things), will result in a healthy Christian perspective. Staying on guard is important, reading for ourselves. After all, it’s supposed to be our faith we’re working out right? And as time goes on, what was previously boring is actually very exciting. Scriptural study is not some mundane thing, it’s a wonderful joy to hear and read truth.
note: If I am saying something wrong by winging it, PLEASE let me know here. I know these are my human thoughts, not God’s words.
I am a C...I am a CH...I am a CHRISTIAN 