I Don't Go To Church

Awhile back, my son-in-law had told my daughter that he didn't know how I believed. How is this possible? How can a person be in close contact with another for better than ten years and not know what belief system s/he subscribes to?
        

I thought about the years gone past. I thought about the way I live and the way I express myself and knew in my heart I do the best I can. I pray freely. I never hide or excuse my Christianity. I'm proud to say I am a Christian. I do charitable work. To my credit, I would give anyone anything I had. I make an effort not to judge people. I don't preach to people or brow beat them with my beliefs. I try to follow the Beatitudes as Christ offered in His Sermon on the Mount. In fact, I have spent my entire life trying to live the life, by quiet example, that Christ came to establish. Apparently it hasn't been enough and I think I know why.

I was raised a Baptist. I went to church with my family and did all the church things. My mother was a dynamic Christian who believed wholeheartedly in the precepts given to us by Christ and His disciples. When she disagreed with some doctrine presented by our church laws, she spoke out and made her voice heard. Needless to say, she wasn't very popular. It isn't that she wished to be a trouble maker, but because she read and studied the Bible daily and because she actively looked for God to guide her and help her grow spiritually, she reached a place where man's doctrines no longer made sense to her. In fact, it seemed the stronger she grew spiritually, the less she understood why the church would dwell on unnecessary rules and legalistic regulations designed to keep people in bondage to a written law, just as the Jews were bound to a written law before Christ came to fulfill it. Mother often pointed out that Paul was heart-broken over the way the Corinthians debated, argued and filled the newly formed church with strife when all they were commissioned to do was love God, and be disciples of Christ's sweet message of freedom. It would seem things haven't changed much in two thousand years. (2 Cor. 12:20)
        

I accepted Christ at a very young age and never once, even in my hardest tribulations, ever believed otherwise than in a perfect God who knows better than I what is best for me. As a child I would swing by myself for hours, simply talking to God. When I was older, I had to learn how to pray man's more formal prayers and I'm still not comfortable at open prayer, because I have always felt prayer was a private conversation between God and me. As I grew up, I continued to reach for a personal relationship with Christ that transcended any other relationship. No matter what, no matter who else failed me, He has always been there for me. I've never needed more proof beyond this so I have walked entirely by simple faith, not sight.
        

When my mother died, I felt such relief for her. She spent her life bucking the system. She wasn't very good at being a hypocrite. This left her basically friendless and alone, except for her relationship with God. People don't want to hear they have muddled things up. People don't want to let go of their rituals and habits. Just like the Corinthians centuries ago, people don't want to hear that Christ's yoke is light. It isn't complicated enough. Furthermore, they need something physical to worship and unfortunately the church concept and building can easily take that honor. This is the danger my mother tried for so long to make people realize. Without even recognizing it, in the subtlest of ways, today's church has become a god in its own right.
        

It is perfectly logical for an organization to admonish its membership to attend regularly to sustain the cash flow, if nothing else. But I know many fine Christians who have been brought to Christ all alone with only the Bible in their laps. If you can be converted by the power of the Holy Spirit without benefit of clergy, then can you not be sustained by that same Holy Spirit? Do we not worship a living God - one whose words and will can penetrate and change us individually?
       

In defense of church, however, I know there are many fine organizations that do God's work daily and fulfill the needs of God's children. I'm not discounting the good work. My point is this only - one can have a personal relationship with God through the redemption and grace of Jesus Christ without feeling a need to bind to a particular doctrine. If you can't find truth in that pure relationship, then what you will experience in a church will be superficial at best anyway. Your experience with an organization must come second to your faith and surrender to Christ. The bottom line is as Oswald Chambers, the revered minister who wrote the sermons that would later be compiled and titled, My Utmost For His Highest so aptly put it, "The only supernatural life is the life the Lord Jesus lived, and He was at home with God anywhere. Is there someplace where you are not at home with God?"

If you have a deeply personal "everywhere" relationship with God, you have no need for manmade doctrine. You may need fellowship, you may need to be needed. These are good things. It is good to seek friends in a place where your beliefs are similar. Church is as good a place to find these things as any. But if you are like me, you need the relationship with God first, not the doctrine or the acceptance of others. I have come too far spiritually to fall victim to the concept that you cannot be close God if you don't attend church because I don't believe any man (especially not an overeducated one) can interpret for me better than what God can place in my heart when my heart is faithful and open to His will.

However, I do believe, even though it has been molded to man's fleshly needs, the physical church still gathers lost sheep and ministers to those who would never hear the name of Christ otherwise and especially those who are only part time Christians without external prodding. Certainly missionaries ferret out and convert the strays of the world. Many would argue that church is not only where you go to worship, it is where you go to seek spiritual wisdom. But I would argue back that I can worship God anywhere, anytime and wisdom is available to anyone who seeks it, in fact, it is guaranteed by Christ to be our endowment from the Holy Spirit. As a child, I prayed in school because I knew no one could stop me. I didn't need a law either way. This is what a personal relationship with God can give you - total freedom. And it is free for the asking, because it was purchased by Christ for each of us, once and for all.
        

It is not my intention to judge or cast disparaging words on today's church, but I am, in the end, a born-again Christian the same as those who attend two services on Sunday and once on Wednesday. I read the Scripture daily and ask for guidance and God's will. I am given blessings and answered prayers. And I know He is with me even when the answer is no or wait. I could never admonish anyone to follow the spiritual road I travel for it can be lonely. Sometimes my soul aches to worship in song and in fellowship with other sincere believers. I know if I could be part of an assembly who wanted nothing more than to worship and praise God I would be there in a flash. But I, like my mother, cannot be a hypocrite. I cannot pretend to follow the written rules in exchange for a proper label. I have met many others who understand this and I believe the coming revival will not be what the traditional church expects.
       

Regardless, I continue to live daily as a Christian, and if I am not easily labeled because I do not affiliate myself with a particular doctrine, then I am still no less a Christian; I am simply not definable as a Baptist or a Lutheran or a Methodist or a Catholic. I'm not conservative or radical or Pentecostal. I reject any theology that doesn't place Christ in its center, and that includes the so called "New Age" religion that isn't really so new. Paganism is paganism. But isn't it funny that if I would simply wear one of those labels anyone would be able to identify how I "believe" but because my life is a living daily expression of my Christianity, I am not recognizable and cannot be put in a category. For this I am not discernable. I have often wondered what category Christ would fit into? What label would He wear? He chose none, and He was dismissed. I believe if He walked into my house and I asked, "Lord, what church do you belong to?" He would likely say, "If ye can ask this, ye have not known me."
       

I admit I find it does distress me to know that in order to be recognized as a Christian, you must attend a church. But the real point here is not about belonging to a church or not; it is about holding yourself responsible for your relationship with God and your own personal spiritual growth instead of leaving it up to an institution. For in the end, when you stand before God, you won't be able to fall back on your doctrine, only on your performance.
        

I feel that as a society our vision has become so blurred by the ever growing powers and needs of the physical church, we are unable to see the basic needs of Christ's real church - the one that is made up of faithful believers who are comfortable with God anywhere. The one that has no walls, nor boundaries and reaches all the way to Heaven.

For we know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. - 2 Cor. 5:1