Honey - all of our stories are the same! It seems that every person I meet with doctrinally sound ideals is either searching for a church or has just found one after searching.
Our church was beloved to me, and it took a lot of prayer for my husband and I to leave. The two deciding factors were 1) our son - who was soaking everything in...of course including things with which we didn’t agree. He was simply too young to discern (he’s 9, was 8 at the time), and was getting caught up in emotionalism.
And 2) between the new(ish) pastor quoting from “Christian” psychologists, using The Message AS A TRANSLATION - then telling me to be more open minded when I called him on it and soooooo many other things heralding a willful disregard for sound doctrine. We left.
Our new church is doctrinally sound with a pastor who takes his shepherding duties (all of them, not just the buddy-style of the shepherding movement) seriously. We have since discovered great men of God like Washer, Piper and MacArthur in whose expository teachings I am currently reveling. Funny, I’d never heard of them before leaving our other church. I had heard lots of Osteen, Warren and the like though. I even heard Hinn mentioned once - granted from a fellow parishioner, but one whom was held in a place of honor as a woman of God.
< sigh >
I feel so helpless.
“Honey - all of our stories are the same! It seems that every person I meet with doctrinally sound ideals is either searching for a church or has just found one after searching...”
Sigh. Very true. I have a friend who goes to a church and they were visited by an affiliate church’s pastor who has been to Florida 3 times already. His wife visited my friend’s woman’s Bible study and prayer meeting and started laughing uncontrollably saying that God was moving on the meeting. It was out of order and the focus was no longer on prayer and God’s word. My friend was so distracted and appalled she didn’t know what to say. I’m sending her these articles in hopes they will help her to share the truth or she may be looking elsewhere too.
(Thanks again for posting this Terriergal.)