There is an appointed time for everything.

And there is a time for every event under heaven…

Ecclesiastes 3:1

When is it okay to share publicly how excited you are to once again attend church when that church is a new church? The joy that has been restored to our souls has nothing to do with being coddled by the people or entertained by the stage show. The joy is from the Lord.

As we entered the doors of this new place God met us there. The Sunday School lessons, the music within the service, the message of the Pastor, the Wednesday night classes, the parent/youth meeting that shared the vision and goal of the youth ministry for the year and encouraged the parents to participate in the church life of their children including discipleship classes that were geared to train and equip parents to disciple their own children and to build relationships with them during this most difficult time of their lives. The youth activity list which consisted of only 4 activities off campus all the way through February. I could go on and on…

My husband and I just sat there giddy, elbowing each other and smiling, because this was everything we had been looking for in consideration of our family.

We walked out one Sunday and the deacons of the church were serving the widows lunch. I have yet to see one woman walk around hauling tables, boxes, or garbage while grown men sat and watched. If water spills over from the sink onto the counter in the ladies bathroom, the ladies there don’t leave it to soak the next ladies clothes… they dry it up before they toss their paper towels in the garbage. These things may seem trivial but they speak volumes to us.

Even at the church where I am serving as the Weekday Education Director. If I need tables moved the men do it. The cleaning ladies come and clean the floors and bathrooms every morning before our preschool begins and they come every evening to check on things. I am able to to do my job with joy because those who are supposed to be doing their job… do it.

Last Sunday as I sat and listened to the Word being shared from the pulpit I simply took a deep breathe in and breathed out while my heart said, “the soil is good.” I have realized that my families feet had been trying to suck nutrients out of soil that simply had no life in it for us anymore. As a matter of fact the soil was actually sucking what life we had out of us to feed itself instead of supplying life to us.  There no longer was any even exchange, no circular motion of photosynthesis. It simply was time for us to be replanted.

It is as the Lord God breathed the words through Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, there is an appointed time for everything…

A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.

(Ecclesiastes 3:2)

Trust me I know all the reasons why not to change churches. I have written about it, Hurt By The Church, read books and blogs about it, and counseled others on it. I have the same issues as any believer would with those who simply church hop to keep from becoming involved or committed. My husband and I were in this place several years ago and as we visited other churches seeing if the Lord was moving us, it just didn’t sit well. My husband explained it as, “it felt like we were cheating on our spouse.”

As we visited and prayed and were actually getting ready one Sunday morning for a first time second visit we heard from God. I was in the shower and my husband was driving home from a night shift. God spoke to both of us, even though we were in separate places, we both clearly knew that God had told us to stay put, but not to stay silent.

My husband came in the door and we shared our experience with one another and then he got ready and left to meet with our Pastor and I began a full force leap into the Children’s Ministry. God actually used the places we had visited to educate me into what I needed to do in that ministry.  We obeyed God and we stayed.

This time when we visited… well, actually we felt called before we visited. The visiting simply was for seeking confirmation. Fifteen years ago, when we walked into the church that we used to attend, it immediately felt like home… and now once again we have walked into a church and it feels like home. The Lord has met us there time after time and spoken through the messages and the people… it’s been both encouraging and liberating.

A pastor can feel called to leave a church and no one questions it… but there is blog after blog by pastor’s about how horrible and devastating and cruel and childish it is for members to leave, as if the pastor is the only one who can be called of God to serve somewhere else.

Not everyone leaves because of the color of the carpet, or which side the piano should go on, or whether or not the drums are too loud. Every once in a while there is indeed legitimate reasons, legitimate convictions, and legitimate hurts. No the church can’t please everyone, but mocking and becoming offended by the reasons they give instead of asking God if this is a valid claim that needs attention called to it… to me that’s arrogance.

Sometimes the Lord let’s the well run dry so that we will pack up and move on… we entered the doors of this new church broken, hungry, hurting, feeling absolutely abandoned and rejected. Today we walked in and I noticed this verse on the wall:

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

There is light in my daughters eyes again. There is hope in my husbands. And there is laughter in mine. We don’t know yet what specific place in ministry we will have here, but that’s okay… right now we are in desperate need of being ministered too and we are finding that here. 

One of the hardest parts has been not attending church with my parents. I loved serving with my parents. I also miss the kids that I got to love on and teach the Word too and I miss encouraging their parents… but this missing is not as hard as watching the continual reminder of hurt scroll through my newsfeed. 

We have chosen to not post about about the encouraging moments we have experienced or “check in” at our new location… out of respect for those we still so love at our old church… but this time of silence is coming to a close. The Lord has moved us to another well, we have found Rehoboth, and we are ready to openly praise Him for it.

But when Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and found there a well of flowing water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with the herdsmen of Isaac, saying, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek, because they contended with him. Then they dug another well, and they quarreled over it too, so he named it Sitnah. He moved away from there and dug another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he named it Rehoboth, for he said, “At last the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.” Then he went up from there to Beersheba. The Lord appeared to him the same night and said,

So he built an altar there and called upon the name of the Lord, and pitched his tent there; and there Isaac’s servants dug a well.

Genesis 26:19-25

Comments