Tks ALL for your encouragement. I suppose none of us are spiritual lone rangers and God does afford us the kind of fellowship we need, even if it does not look like the 'church' as she has evolved today since the book of Acts.
Which brings me to my story, rather His(tory)
I've been a follower of Christ a little under a decade, having left the Roman Catholic church in which I was baptised and raised. Feeling that I must do
something on Sunday mornings, I promptly joined a nondenominational church for about a year where I enjoyed the camaraderie and spiritual highs! As my husband hates believers and rabidly so (now I know why!
, I eventually quit, but not before I was indoctrinated with alot of lies which are accepted as biblical truth. Actually not all of it was attributed to the church I attended, but largely gleaned from Christian media, tv, books, net, et al. But although I continued to fellowship loosely with Christian friends, I was largely in the wilderness, and God did meet me there. To cut a long story short, He opened my eyes, showed me the error of what I believed, the biblical contradictions and the glaring, in your face
abomination of desolation that has been set up in Christ's church today. Along the way, He has stripped me of every vestige of Christian practice - works and prayer in the flesh, tithing, ministry, evangelism, in a way that, when I look back I marvel. At the time, I wondered what was happening! Then He led me to this forum and everything fell in place like a jigsaw puzzle.
When I left the RC church, I had BIG plans for the Lord, that my family would serve the Lord (Joshua 24:2,15) that we would do ministry together, that we would be
set apart for the Lord. My elder girl was five at the time and I decided I would
raise her a Christian. I bought her several bibles, apologetics, bible story books and movies, taught her right from wrong, goaded her, pushed her, prised her, Sunday schooled her till she rebelled. Now I have a sweet little Pharisee growing in my backyard! Does anyone have any idea how I could weed her out?!
I’m determined not to repeat the mistake with my younger one! I’ll let her grow wild (well, not quite) till the Lord decides to weed her out. I digress...
At some point I decided that I wanted out of the wilderness. I didn't want to go back to church, so I looked around for a house group. We were there for about a year, the girls and I loved it. We were equally yoked, or so I thought, till the cracks began to show up. The group were
lately come out from the catholic church and had some weird beliefs - bad things would happen if you didn't pray, sprinkling of the blood on everything, much demon talk,
holy gossip etc. So we disengaged. About the same time I was introduced to Frank Viola's book 'Pagan Christianity' and 'Reimagining Church'. Also Joshua Hills, 'Some Assembly Required' - on the net till it was mysteriously taken down. What eyeopeners!
Finally, I'm learning to be content where God wants me to be. Nothing that I can see is happening in my life. Whom the Son sets free is free indeed! John 8:36 We rest in the knowledge that God is still building His church.