Stigma

I feel like I will be living with the stigma of growing up in a Word of Faith Prosperity church for the rest of my life. So I take every chance I can to condemn it. It is vile and ugly and a total perversion of how God wants a Christian to live their life. It is all about them and not about our saviour Jesus Christ. Thinking back on things, I remember Jesus mainly being mentioned in the praise and worship music at the beginning of the service. After that, it was Spirit, Faith, Impartations, Pastor, and Money. And I know that he was referring to the Holy Spirit but the pastor always seemed to make things so spooky and vague. The faith part seems like voodoo to me now. The impartations seems like demon possession, and the pastor loved himself and money. All-in-all it was all just plain wrong.

Practically everyday, I am still thanking God I am away from there. Recently I had the pleasure of hearing Greg Surratt the Senior Pastor of Seacoast Church in Charleston, SC. He said something in his sermon that I can not put any more eloquently so I will quote him. "The only person getting rich in a prosperity church is the one preaching prosperity." Hey look at that, I am different from my former pastor; he would have just ripped that quote off and not had any guilt over it.

Missing the Point

I feel like I have missed the point in sharing my faith with others. Because what was it that I shared about? MY FAITH. When in fact, it has very little to do with me. It is all about, "Jesus loves us." I am going to break that sentence down into basic components. First things first, Jesus is God. The entire Bible points to this fact. Next is love, and well God is love (1 John 4:8). So there is two-thirds of the sentence about God. Finally we come to us in the sentence. According to the U.S. Census Bureau there are an estimated 6.77 billion people on earth right now. And let's not forget all of our ancestors. Jesus died for all of our sins. Makes my portion of that sentence pretty small. Why would I share about my own faith and how I have done things, when I am a mere speck, a mist, a vapour. It isn't about me and the things I have stood in faith for or the things I have accomplished. This is about my savior. I should be screaming from the roof tops what He has done for us!

But unfortunately this is what I was taught at my church growing up. And this is an incredibly dangerous thing. Children were taught that the most important thing in their Christian walk is what they can get God to do for them. Children were taught that the most important thing is faith... they begin to have faith in faith, not God.

Do not allow your child to grow up in a church like this. A church like this will pollute you as an adult... think about how it pollutes the still forming mind of a child.

The Enormity of God

Have you ever stopped to think about just how big God is? The creator of the universe. He spoke and created all of the animals and plants. He spoke and created light. He spoke and separated the land from the water.

He set into motion all of the natural laws... Gravity, friction, aerodynamics, erosion, and so on.

He created time.

And yet he formed man. Breathed life into him. Fellowshipped with this man. And when this man messed things up, God began to work to restore man to a place of fellowship with Him. You get that? YAHWEH wants to spend time with us.

He cares for us more than we can know. He made the Grand Canyon but He loves us. He made the sea shore but he wants to be with us. The Alps are beautiful but we are his favorite creation. The stars may help to light up our night, but when God spends time with us it excites Him.

This relationship with God should never be cheapened to an act. All of the philanthropy in the world can't take the place of spending time with God. He loves US. He doesn't love what we do for Him. He already gave of Himself to save us. Just because we don't give some money in this service or because we didn't volunteer for yet another area to work in the church, does not mean that God won't bless us. I have a 2 year old daughter. Do you think for a moment that I would not think of some way that I could totally make her day just because she didn't clean up all of her crayons. How much more is God going to be thinking about how to take care of us. The God of the universe loves me and he doesn't care about the three crayons I didn't pick up behind the easel.