Re-entry into Real Life (The Season of De-programming)

Recently a lady on the discussion 

list mentioned being out of the IC

for a year, and not having church

meetings per se, but gathering with 

friends more and more, and finding 

these relationships deepening, and 

beginning to grow. She noticed that 

ministry was happening all the time 

now, in many different situations, 

and wondered if this was ok. Nothing 

formal or organized, one couple this 

day, another friend that day.

I just wanted to bless this thing, 

say it is SO GOOD.  This is what God 

wants for you right now. HE took you 

out of the uptight bondage and wants 

you to enjoy some free time and fellowship 

without the junk.

I liken this stage to spiritual rights 

of passage, or kind of like a spiritual 

passing from childhood to adulthood. It 

makes sense, doesn't it, that as we mature 

in our faith, and as we begin to accept and 

fully implement the truth, that we are always 

the Church, whenever we are together, that 

no specific time or day or activity is more 

"spiritual" than another? And sometimes we 

can't really imagine how this way of living 

will look or flesh out.

But when you stop to ponder it, this IS 

the way the process will be. You know 

the things that were no longer real or 

relevant to the truths you had been 

shown by the Lord, and you sort of abandoned 

them. (With the exception of those who just 

transferred the whole thing into a different 

room) There will be some holes for awhile, 

or some places that have been cleared, but 

not replaced. This can feel heretical and 

uncomfortable, but some crooked walls can’t 

be fixed until they have been knocked down 

and rebuilt from the ground up. We all have 

places like this inside of our hearts.

Just like when a child grows into adulthood, 

and has their own family. You

aren't going to keep everything your 

parents did. Even in a healthy respectful 

parent child relationship, you are going to 

set up your own home and family into the way 

that you all develop mutually.

You will have chosen of your own free will 

to adhere to the truths that you

believe, you aren't just doing it because 

Mom and Dad say so. (Or pastor upperling said so)

You will abandon some things that didn't 

sit with you, and that don't work

with you and your kids, because you are 

different. Not abandoning truth, just the 

things that are choices and the way you 

practice these truths, and their gig may 

not work for you. You may have a vision 

on a different expression that isn’t allowed. 

You may have inspired ministry flowing out of

you that isn’t wanted. I did. I had to take 

my leave, and I wasn’t in a hurry to jump 

back in anywhere else, because the basics 

were all the same. He wanted time to do 

some rebuilding in quiet.

SO, when you are sitting in that climate 

controlled sanctuary, and the big

Sunday morning dog and pony show is 

playing out before you, and you have 

that moment of understanding that there 

is no life in this for you.  You can't 

sense God in it. You know that you don't 

feel any more spiritual there than you do 

when you are ministering to your friends, 

loved ones, or family of believers in your 

home. In fact, you sense Christ's spirit 

more over dinner with your friends than 

here. This discernment begins to compel 

you. And Sunday morning business as usual 

takes on a grim, fake, worked-up air.

You know that within your own heart, 

nothing magically changes into something 

more important or spiritual when you walk 

through those double doors. God doesn't 

get any more real to your spirit when the 

clock hand clicks onto the 9. You don't 

learn any differently or better because 

that guy up front has something (long) to 

say. You learn these same truths from your 

children, or your friends, or your mentors, 

or your spouse, or the bag lady on the corner, 

if you are open to them. Your heart doesn't 

get some special dose of worship because there 

is a band there, practiced and prayed up. 

You worship just as intimately, or more so, 

singing with your child, or dancing through 

a field of flowers. Or rejoicing with the 

Lord over the sunrise. Or hoeing in the garden.

It's just that we don't always expect 

the things these truths do in our daily 

experience once we have received them. 

We will be different, act different, 

think differently of the value of our 

conversations, our meals, be more committed 

to getting together, just for the sake of 

gathering together, rather than putting on 

the big show, or organizing some 

order of how it has to be. And we will need 

a different way of expressing 

this life, that the church in the box fast 

foot stand up sit down say this say that 

thing. We will want a more intimate and 

close MUTUAL time of worshipping.

For those who find the organized approach 

easier to take in, fine. But organized 

information in no more helpful or truthful 

than random information, and 9 o'clock is 

no holier or apt to put you in touch 

with God than any other hour of the day. 

It's not a formula; it's a love relationship. 

IT takes commitment, for sure, but the 

commitment doesn't have to be to a certain 

set of activities, or regular conference 

attendance.

I guess, when you have a new baby in the 

house, you are forced to understand these 

concepts. You don't get your morning devotion 

on schedule, you don't get your sleep at night, 

you don’t get your lunch, your bible reading, 

your radio teaching, your sermons, you don't 

get your hour of quiet before the Lord, and 

you learn how to bend and get it while washing 

the dishes, changing a diaper, or rocking a 

fussy baby. To receive God in everything around 

you. TO see Him there, to search for Him there,

to change the way you see life, because He is 

there. (Somewhere!) You are no longer irritated 

with things that take you away from religion, 

you begin to cherish the way everything is a 

worship, everything is church, everything 

is beautiful.

It's kind of like the pain of labor, too. 

You learn to focus on God all the time and 

find Him in each situation, in pain, in 

between contractions, when you doubt yourself, 

when things are gong wrong, when you want 

to scream, you have to keep your focus on 

the truth that God is there with you and 

you can do this. He hasn’t left because 

you didn’t attend a service, or because 

no one is there playing thru some well 

rehearsed songs. No matter what it looks 

like or feels like, even though the situations 

aren't mapped out in the way you are used to 

them and you feel like you are out of energy

and desperate. (But after this labor a new 

baby comes to you! And no two babies, or 

labors are the same. There aren’t cookie 

cutters or assembly lines in the Kingdom of God!)

This understanding of knowing He is there, 

and in action around you, is so stimulating 

to spiritual life and growth in the moment to 

moment. Everything is a teaching. Everything 

is a worship experience. You don't always feel 

Him, it doesn't take some experiential thing 

to convince you that you are abiding in Him 

and He in you. I guess you abandon these former 

ideas. Surprise! Rather than making you 

irresponsible, it actually puts the truth and 

weight of your relationship with God on your 

own shoulders, and causes you to give Him your 

heart around the clock, seek Him sincerely and 

fervently, and not put your trust in yourself, 

clergy, or man-defined rituals to save you, or 

keep you in His favor. Thinking for yourself 

can be quite liberating!

That's what I am hearing. I don't know how 

long this stage will be, I have stopped even 

asking God how long. The Holy Spirit seems 

to enjoy working on a need to know basis. The 

answers will come if we need them, and we just 

go on without them sometimes, and the thing 

we are growing in is so fulfilling and rich 

that we satisfy ourselves with that, and 

sometimes it's hard and we wish for answers, 

but they will come if we keep our hearts open

and seeking. There may be a time of empty 

slowness. A time of just casual gathering, 

friends, meals, intimate conversations. Yes! 

This is it!

I suppose I'm saying that the process of 

growing into a more meat eating believer, 

and being less dependent on our earthly 

caregivers telling us what when where and 

how to do things, can be wrought with doubts 

and mistakes and even scary times. Just 

like growing up is. But it is natural. It 

is His plan. He doesn't want us weak and 

co-dependent on a structure or a man to tell 

us how to think or what to say or to DEFINE 

WHO WE ARE IN CHRIST.  He wants us to find 

out for ourselves, but TOGETHER in the process. 

The close personal togetherness is the 

safeguard and accountability, not the sermon! 

The close personal togetherness is the 

covering that keeps you safe all together, 

not your membership to an organization! Accept 

that it will be a shaky journey at times. 

We will have to give up some of our security 

objects and transfer our dependence onto Him.

I feel the same as you, I feel the Lord 

blessing fellowship with everyone I gather 

with, and I have become so much more committed 

to regularly gathering in this personal and 

intimate way than I ever was when I was 

plugged into the institution, and living 

something that I didn't really believe. Also, 

there are so many more needs for a human, 

than just meetings. We need to play together,

work together, help each other with our kids, 

our projects, take trips together, talk about 

our walk together. Eat together, you know. 

More to it than sitting and listening.

I want to be sure and say, that I am not 

throwing away Christian truths or tenants 

of my faith, or scriptural concepts. I am 

saying that they are no longer limited to 

certain activities or meetings or events. 

They have now expanded into every thing I 

do, and I revere no man or hour or event as 

holier or more spiritual than any other. So 

to go to a place that regards itself in this 

way, feels full of false pretense to me.

When you think about abandoning old dead wood 

stuff, and then sorting through what really 

matters to you, and what you feel is the 

truth to live by, there will be this unsure 

thing from time to time.  God will show you 

what to keep and what to throw away. It's not 

too hard in concept, in the idea realm, it's 

just that once you start doing it in the real 

daily life practices, then you start wondering. 

Is this okay?  And you start getting flak from 

programmed people who WANT the old ‘ritual = 

good Christian’ format, and think you are 

weird. You are in good company, though. Most

of Jesus' followers are considered wacko 

anyway, even when they try to fit in. I think 

I have accepted the idea that I'm just not 

going to fit in and it doesn't matter. I am 

living true to the light and convictions that 

I have been shown by the Lord.  I’m not trying 

to live a ton of them, just the ones I know for 

sure. Because His ways are the opposite of 

people’s ways, they are going to look strange 

to other people, including Christians. 

(Particularly the highly indoctrinated 

legal types) 

It's one thing to believe something, but 

it's quite another situation to actually 

do it and live it. Many times we believe 

something, but we have all> kinds of 

practices that send the message that we 

aren't planning on actually putting it into 

practice in our lives. We are prone to 

kidding ourselves. We don’t rally have a 

clue what it will look like as we start 

living these things. We are shocked to 

find out what it can mean to us, to our 

lives.  I believe that faith in God is more

caught than taught. When Christians take 

action, they can't help but make an impact. 

Whether a negative, or a positive response, 

the impact has been felt.

It seems only natural to me, that after years 

of sucking in all of the 1000's of teachings 

on the Body of Christ, that at one point we 

would rise up and begin to live it, rather 

than sitting there and listening to it 

forever and denying the fact that we are 

not doing it. We'll get there! Not without 

some risks, though!

Going to a meeting is one thing. Being a 

part of the Lord's living breathing body 

is another.

Being the church is a state of mind. The 

world becomes your Dance, rather than your 

task master. Better than what we are 

imagining, people, much deeper, richer, 

satisfying the deepest desires of our hearts, 

some that we don't even know about yet, but 

He does. And He is bringing us into this 

place. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Don’t expect some superstar hype thing, though. 

Try to keep you addiction to church hype at 

bay. Lay it on the altar. You have let your 

seed fall to the ground and die. Now, you have 

to leave the rest completely in God’s hands,

trusting him to grow whatever pleases him.

When I was first learning to be the church, 

after leaving the institutional variety, it 

was spring and we were moving on. (Literally 

moving to a different land as well as 

spiritually) I was cleaning out my closet. 

It hadn't been cleaned out in years. I sort 

of wanted to hang on to everything. But I had 

to be ruthless, because I would have to haul 

all of this baggage to a foreign country if 

I didn’t deal with it. As I was going through, 

the Lord began to show me the metaphor of 

what I was doing in the natural, to what He 

wanted me to do in the spiritual. It's not 

that those old clothes were bad, or evil, 

or wrong, they served a purpose at a time, 

a time now passed, and now He wanted me to 

sort out only what I needed for right now, 

and make a break with all the stuff I used 

to need. I didn’t need this stuff in the 

place he was taking me to. Some of it was 

very difficult to part with. The baby 

clothes, cribs, I didn’t feel I could part 

with them. I think I was procrastinating 

that this season of my life was done. I 

didn’t want to face the truth, so I kept 

them down in the dark dust. It was wrong 

for me to hang on to them though.  

Someone else needed them; they were useless

 in the basement. Taking up space. The 

maternity clothes. It was time to clear them

out, don't keep anything that you aren’t 

USING. He wanted me traveling light. I mean, 

you are older now, you aren't going to be 

wearing the same things you wore as a child. 

You have no use for them, aside from 

nostalgia, and some type of false security 

they bring. They don't fit you anymore, you 

have grow out of them. You aren't the child 

that is the heir who is treated like the 

slave, and kept from his treasure lest it 

destroy him in his immaturity. You are 

growing up now, and you will be allowed 

to make your own choices, and you will 

re-evaluate the choices you made when you 

were a child. This is like adolescence. You 

are going to reject some stuff that was put 

on you before, it’s a type of rebellion, but 

not a sinful rebellion, but a rebelling 

against the loads that religious people have 

strapped onto your back. They couldn’t 

carry it either, and weren’t carrying it, 

but they didn’t tell you that, and you were 

naive and took it all in. Time to get rid 

of these things. In your mind, they are 

taking up lots of space and draining you. 

And they are dead weight to you now.

Jesus traveled light. HE didn't haul a 

bunch of luggage around. IF you aren't 

putting something into use, get rid of 

it! We will undergo spring cleaning in 

our closet of faith. We will pass into 

a different season, and> rethink why we 

have this, and do we want to keep it. Is 

it the truth, or is it some legalistic 

compulsive junk that has been dumped on 

us by unhealthy people in the past. And 

we will discard some stuff.

Many of the religious ideologies that we 

received as truth were not the truth. They 

were more like obsessive compulsive 

Christanese bondage. You do this, you don’t 

do that, and then you will be saved. This 

is just like the Law of Moses, but a better 

thing has come. This was just to show us 

our complete inadequacy so that we wouldn’t 

be foolish enough to think we could save 

ourselves by following a set of rules. 

To go back to following them after we have 

been saved by grace is ludicrous and more 

importantly, completely ineffective at 

healing ourselves of our sin. We can’t do it.

I didn't abandon anything the Lord had 

taught me, no, I held on to them, and I 

let go of everything else, the second hand

sermons that I didn't get, the condemnation, 

the rituals that had no relevance to my 

heart, the empty worn out mantras that I 

took in when I was a baby Christian. They 

never really spoke any truth to my heart, 

but I didn’t know how to discern that back 

then. Now I do.

Then He gave us a word; I believe it to 

be in Exodus. He commanded the children of 

Israel, as they were passing through to the 

land of promise, not to settle down anywhere, 

or build structures, or make any binding 

contracts with the people in those places. 

He told them, that those were not the 

promised land, and they were to travel 

light, not plant crops, and especially not 

lock themselves into contracts with others. 

He didn't want them tied down before they 

reached the place he had for them. He knew 

they would want to. He knew they would 

become distracted at each new thing 

and want to camp there and think they had 

found His promised place for them.

It’s the same with us. The lighter we can 

travel, the better. Belonging to one 

another is beautiful, but locking each 

other into bondage, or getting sucked into 

some siren mirage and deciding we have 

arrived  is not. (Ironically, that very 

Sunday at the church we had just started 

going to, we were asked to sign a contract 

to join the worship team. Our eyes were as 

big as saucers when they handed us that 

contract. The next week we found out God 

was sending us to Germany for a year)

When the heir becomes an adult, she begins 

to receive the inheritance that was 

promised. She no longer stays trapped in 

the same structure that protected her as 

a child. She has received training, walked 

in the truth, and established herself in 

the Lord. She governs herself now, directly 

through the Spirit of God, and grown up

meat eating Christians can be expected to 

do the same. We should be moving forward to 

pursue the inheritance of freedom, of 

flowing in our ministry  to others without 

legalistic interference or hindrance, we 

should be taking more responsibility in our 

relationship with the Lord, and others, and 

learning how to walk on our own two legs, 

rather than leaning on institutional 

crutches, or depending on regular rituals 

to make us right with God. We should be 

convinced in our own minds, what is right, 

wrong, good, bad, sin, pleasure. Sure, 

we’ll blow it as we are learning, but to 

stunt someone’s> growth for fear they will 

make a mistake is doing them a terrible 

disservice. Any structure or environment 

that traps believers in their infancy and 

refuses to let them experience ministry, 

growing up, and even surpassing their> 

teachers, is going to become bondage to 

that person eventually.

They are not rebellious or unforgiving (or 

spiritually unstable, as we were labeled 

on our way out) to leave, they are 

surviving, moving on, saying no toa dead 

practice, and saying yes to whatever God has 

next. (A leap of faith, as you don’t know 

what that is, or if it even exists)  He is 

calling us into a deeper relationship, and 

a grappling for a greater portion of our 

inheritance to walk in, and anything that 

would interfere with that has to go.

Another important issue in a believers 

growth is their practice of spiritual 

discernment. When a Christian hears a 

message being preached, (for years) that 

is not being practiced, they should 

discern this as being off kilter. Something 

is wrong with that message, do as I say 

and not as I do. Discernment is a muscle. 

If it isn’t used, it atrophies. To be in 

a place and be told to be the church, and 

then be constantly and systematically 

denied this reality is weakening to the 

discernment. This is the reason behind 

apathy in the institution. Nothing ever 

changes about this, and won’t until the 

pastors sit down and shut up and let the 

body minister to itself.  When you know it’s 

wrong, but you stay anyway, you grow weak, 

watered down. Complacent. Double minded. 

Confused. This was our experience, and when 

we left, all of these pollutants were 

cleared from our minds. The supposed 

‘covering’ we had been under, apparently, 

had covered us with slime. And that’s just 

what we felt the last few months we were 

there. Slimed.

The blessing we felt from the Lord was so 

strong when we left, the blessing of doing 

what your heart has been telling you for 

so long, but your lead feet couldn’t seem 

to follow. We need to act on the things we 

are discerning, if we want to grow in 

discernment. To know the truth isn’t enough,

we have to do the truth. Live the truth. 

Love the truth. Line ourselves up with it. 

Stop practicing things that are false 

religion to us. Just do what you know 

He has shown you to do, and let Him add 

in the next thing to walk in. Don’t let 

other people tell you what God is saying

to you. Weigh it carefully, and reject it 

if you discern it to be bondage. It’s hard 

when the whole congregation is nodding their 

heads and saying “yup yup yup”.  You feel 

like you are going crazy.  That’s why I 

think He wants us in a quiet period of rest 

and relaxed conversations, so we can begin 

to function without this pressure working 

against the truth in us.

My Grandma had a neighbor that used to bring 

her over big beautiful tomatoes out of her 

garden. But she knew that this woman 

fertilized her garden with raw sewage. So 

after she took the tomatoes, said thank 

you, and closed the door, she walked those 

tomatoes right over to the trashcan and 

dropped them in. Sure, they looked 

beautiful, bigger and better than her

own, but where did they come from? That’s 

the part she wasn’t willing to take in. 

Don’t take something into your bag of 

beliefs if your spirit doesn’t feel right 

about it. Maybe it looks and sounds great, 

but leave it. Say thank you and walk it 

over to the trash bin. You don't have to 

take everything people try to hand you! 

REALLY! We all have some of these tomatos 

occupying space in our minds, and they need 

to go away. They impair clarity, and distort 

discernment, suck up your spiritual juices, 

and they didn’t come from God. They were 

unloaded on you by someone.

Now, I'm a parent, we are settled in, 

as far as in our town. So I’m not talking 

about roaming around with a back pack 

forever, but regular inventory of what you 

have been taking in, and whether it’s life 

for you or bondage. Maybe you never really 

bought it, but thought you were supposed to 

submit yourself to anything and everything 

your pastor told you.  I'm talking about 

learning what works for you, and what 

doesn't, seeking God, and being ruthless 

in your moral inventory, doing the things 

you know you believe, and getting rid of 

the things you don't or never did, but just

maybe pretended you did to get along or fit 

into the program.

God doesn’t want you to compromise your own 

spiritual discernment to please anybody. 

Trust in His power to lead you, and show 

you what to take in, and what to throw out. 

He wants you to walk on your own legs. It’s 

natural. It’s growth. God blesses it.

Jenny

HOME