The Next Chapter...

So, after much thought and prayer for mine and my families lives, we felt that it was the best thing for us to leave our current church.  We were falling into disagreement with them over issues of finance, leadership and hearts.  Yes, hearts.  There seemed to be heart issues at the bottom of myself and some of the leadership that have not been addressed.  This raises concern for me and my family, because we feel that these things should be addressed.  Again, being so far removed from the rest of the church body, we had no community, and the community group we were supposed to be in ceased to exist after a couple months of meeting.  Our group leader just stopped meeting and then they decided to go to another group without letting us know.  So many issues of what went wrong that it is hard to pin point the exact moment where we felt that we were in the wrong place.  I could go on an on about the negative things, but after much thought about it, me and my wife realized that God had brought us there to learn more about 'US'.  We needed to be there.  We needed to learn.  And boy did we learn.  We learned that I don't need to be in church leadership.  It puts too much strain on my relationships.  I feel as though God was showing me that He doesn't need me to be a church planter or pastor.  These were things that I desired or thought that God was desiring for me.  And when I started to see all that went into it, I knew that I could not do that.  I could not put my family through that.

We also learned that we had been hurt pretty bad from the previous church, and with the help of the leadership from the new church, we were able to move past the hurt to a place of forgiveness.  This was a huge source of healing in our lives, and then opened up more areas for God to penetrate.  We have dealt with a lot over the past year and just needed a place to be comforted and loved on.  When we first arrived at the new church, that was what happened, but through the course of the year, that welcome was worn out.  My wife was not included with the other ladies, and for some reason they excluded her on several occasions where they were hanging out.  This does not sit well with me, and being the leader of my family I realized that we need to be at a place where the whole family feels welcome.  We need a place where the children are well taken care of in the nursery and not under staffed.  We need a church that is a place of community, healing, conviction, redemption and love.  We needed to move.  And move we did.

Once we left, we felt this huge weight off of our shoulders.  We expected to get phone calls from the leaders or text messages or even emails.  But to our suprise, we got nothing.  No communication from anyone other than the lead pastor in regards to not letting anyone talk bad about us.  I have no issue with that because we had done nothing to warrant anyone talking bad about us or slandering our name, and if they did, then that would be on them.  All I wanted was some communication about them missing us.  Instead, what was communicated was that they all agreed that we needed to find a church closer to our home.  That makes me mad because until I started challenging things within the leadership, they loved us being a part of the church no matter how far we were driving.  Anyways, I could go on for hours but that is not the point.  The point is that God is writing the next chapter in our lives and we are hanging on every word.

It is exciting and scary all at the same time, which is exciting and scary.  We have said it time and time again that we want to live open handed with God and that we want our lives to be tranparent to what God is doing in them.  Tranparency can be such a hard word to swallow, and most of the time the reason for that is because people don't want others to see what is going on, on the inside.  We want our lives to be visible from the inside out, not the other way.  So I will end this post with this last bit of information.  We are taking every day with an open hand.  We are living by faith with the understanding that God is going to provide.  We are going to operate our lives in accordance with what the scriptures teach and we will raise our children along the same path.  We are living lives that are inside out.  This next chapter is sure to be an interesting one...

Learning...

So it appears that over the past few months since my last post, I have had a lot of learning experiences.  I am learning what it means to be a dad, I am learning how to love my wife during the times I don't feel like loving her, and I am learning that God has given me the potential to exceed my expectations of myself.  This has been a very hard pressed time.  I personally have never felt so far removed from God.  I struggle to 'feel' His presence in my life.  I am not leading my family well.  On the outside it looks great, but on the inside, I am at fault for my wife's lack of interest in church and her lack of desire to even go.  And to be on the leadership team and no one to know what is really going on is very tough.  I want the men to pry into me and strip me down to bare the issues that are going on within the four walls of my home, but I don't see that happening. 

I don't have close friends anymore and the ones that I feel should be my close friends, don't live in any proximity of my house.  I am about 30-45 minutes away from my church home and the community that I feel me and my family should be involved in, but we continue to live in the same house, talk to the same friends that we had before we changed churches.  I don't know what to think.  I am struggling with where God wants me and my family.  I am beginning to question whether or not I even heard from God to leave.  I am just so lost when it comes to all this that I am learning what it means to listen. 

I am learning to pick up on the subtleness of my wife when it comes what she wants and desires.  Sometimes her subtleness is as subtle as a brick to the face.  And my precious daughter continues to excite me every day.  She is growing by leaps and bounds.  She is now crawling and talking that I keep holding out for that one day when she says 'Da-Da'.  It hasn't come yet, but I know that one day she will say it and my heart will melt again.  So I wait.

And I wait.

Waiting for what I ask?  I am not sure.  But through all of this learning and waiting, I am finding more clarity within my own theology and understanding of the Bible.  I am finding truths that I had not known before, and I am even stripping off some old baggage that I carried with me after leaving our previous church home.  That has been a good thing.  This has been a hard thing.  This has been a joyous thing.  My wife had been telling me that there was this anger that seeped into my conversations when I talked of the past church.  She said that I needed to watch my tone and to let it go.  But who wants to let go of something that they can wound people with?  I love that feeling in my gut that at any moment I can stab that person with words and wound them harder and deeper than they ever imagined.  I even did this with my wife.  Her past came up and I felt betrayed.  I felt that she was not the person I married and that somehow I was being betrayed by her.  I was feeling something inside me that was telling me that all this was happening now and somehow I bought into that lie.  I would wound her with my words and crush her in my heart.  I wanted out and didn't care what destructive path I would leave in my wake.  Then I met with my current pastor and talked about it all and realized that I needed to forgive her, even if this was in the past.  For some reason, I never forgave her from her past because it never came to the forefront of my mind.  When we met we were in a whirlwind of emotions and feelings that at that point I could care less of what she had done with her life.  All I knew was that I loved here and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.  So when all this came up, we had never dealt with it.  We were newlywed parents.  Just being newlyweds is tough, but throw a kid in the mix.  Now that is just insanity.  And then the changing of churches and the damage in my heart that was caused from the leave, added to all of this was just a recipe for disaster.  I had to keep clinging to the fact that God had married us.  God had brought us together and that I should feel so priveleged to think that out of all the men in the world, God chose me to be the image bearer of Christ to my wife and to love her as Christ loves the church.  This is a huge responsibility and God asked me to do that.  I was blown away when I came to that realization.  Truly blown away.  I say all of that to say this.  God has done an amazing work in my heart over the past year, and I know He isn't finished.  Completion won't happen this side of eternity, but I now have a clearer understanding of my call.  My call is to follow Jesus, lead my family well and love my church. 

And with that, this brings me full circle to my original point of not leading well.  I know I am falling short.  I know I need help.  But, to ask for help, is to admit that I can't do it all.  And for a man to admit that, feels like defeat.  I want more than ever to be victorious, and to be that, I need help.  So I am pleading with God to help.  Draw me in to you so that I can be lead by your Spirit, so I can love and lead my family well.

I love the song by Sanctus Real called Lead Me.  This is how I feel about 99.9% of the time, so I am going to end with these words:

So Father, give me the strength
To be everything I'm called to be
Oh Father, show me the way
To lead them

Won't You lead me?

To lead them with strong hands
To stand up when they can't
Don't want to leave them hungry for love
Chasing things that I could give up

I'll show them I'm willing to fight
And give them the best of my life
So we can call this our home
Lead me 'cause I can't do this alone

Father, lead me 'cause I can't do this alone

A week of weakness

So this week began with a bang. Me and my wife got into an argument that lasted for 2 days. This was not good. It got me to a dark place that I was questioning why we even got married and had a kid. Not good. I began getting angry and stewing in that and not wanting to get out. It was easier to stay there than ask for help out. Then her father was in town because her sister had her new baby this week. Her dad knew something was up but not to the extent that it was. He took our child and told us to go to the room and hash it out. But to pray together and hold each others hand. So we went to the room an sat in silence for what seems an hour. I was weak and didn't really know what I wanted at that moment. So, we hashed it out. We talked. We cried. We even told each other how they made us feel. There were a lot of unmet expectations floating around. I stopped being the man, husband, father and leader God had designed me to be. She kept feeling neglected. We all stopped communicating and sat in our weakness not asking each other for help. Man marriage is tough. Man parenting is tough. I know someone out there is probably saying "I told you so!". And you are probably right. But why is it we feel that we need to walk through it in order to understand it? Is that stupidity or is it learning? Should we take it in when we are told those things or should we get to experience the joys and pain like every one else? Someone once told me that stupidity is not listening to the guidance given. So if someone were to say to you don't touch the stove or you will get burned, but curiously you wonder if they are for real and you touch it and get burned, are you stupid? Or is it you being curious and wanting to find out the truth by going through the fire. (no pun intended). I think it is not a good idea to say it is stupidity because the truth is we all do it. So do we say we are all stupid? Or do we say we are all fallen beings living in a fallen world which we are born depraved. I like the latter. We are evil people and we do evil things. But we aren't stupid. God has given us many guidelines to live by and rules to follow, but we all break those from time to time. But we aren't stupid, we are sinners. Two completely different adjectives that describe us. Let that sink in for a bit.

We aren't stupid, we are sinners.

How do you feel about that? Does that make you mad or relieved that you aren't stupid? If it does that is good. Or does it concern you that you are evil and a sinner? Well, Romans says it best. "For we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." no one is good. But no where in the Bible does it say we are stupid. Sinners yes. Stupid no.

So back to the weak. I was weak and didn't want help. But I knew I needed it. Kind of like Jesus saving us. We know we can't save ourselves and we know we need someone to do it for us. That is where Jesus comes in. He loves us and rescues us from death. There is nothing stupid about that. And we are going to mess up along the way. It's a given. But the good thing is that once we have been saved, we are saved from everything. That is awesome. That is for the weak.