What Church Never Taught Me

I found it so odd that I would go to church and start rotting immediately when I stepped out of the building. I found it increasingly strange that I would pray a novena in one minute and be sinking in ungodly texts with a boyfriend in the next. It was indeed rather upsetting to me that I not only started looking like an abscess but I also smelt like one too.

Took a break to enjoy nature. Loved it!

'Spiritual death comes one compromise at a time,' I was too lukewarm to like this quote and stand by it because standing by it meant shooting myself in the foot.

The Biggest Lie

I thought that if I went to church every Sunday and if I dressed modestly, if I avoided cursing (which started to change too, because, compromise) and if I took up more catechism classes, that I would be considered 'holy'. 'Right'.

I came to be known as a 'good girl'. I laugh now, because that good girl was so lost in her 'good' works and she had a lot to learn.

In the most uncanny way, I came to finally ask God, 'Now what?’ . This was after He had interrupted all my plans for my life. In a weird turn of events, He was calling out to me, He wanted us to talk. I had been running far and fast from Him because deep inside I knew. I knew that if I ever faced Him and told Him a solid 'yes', I would have to forego all security. That hurt. I did not want to look like a sore loser. Yet if at all I was ever to receive God, I would have to let all else go. I call it “The Abraham-Isaac Test.”

I was doomed as a religious girl. I was so lost in works that I became mechanical. I lived by the law and so died by it. The rosaries, novenas, chaplets, masses-all of them, did not save me when I was fighting for my dear life against physical and spiritual antagonists. They were all powerless when it came to my deliverance process. All my good works failed me because despite them, I still fell so short. I saw God as a militant leader who was waiting for me to fail in order to punish and who was eager to take me off the line. I had no relationship with God. I was a mere servant.

True Identity In Christ

In 2011, I remember seeing a classmate in high school minister from her heart during Saturday worship and I at that time, though deeply religious, saw her as one who was ministering directly to God. "I want to encounter you like her!" I told God. (He took notes, I forgot. LOL.)

Then it happened. Close to 10 years later, it finally happened. Through a stormy feat, God walked on water and met me-drowning, dying.

He ripped the militant ideology from me as the first thing. He taught me that I am not a servant but His own child. A naughty one, but loved all the same. Jesus says in His word that we are not servants for servants do not know what their master does. My head: "Ok this makes sense. I know stuff about Jesus, so that means I am not locked out. Ok. I am not a servant after all!"

Church did not help me know me for real. I admittedly did not know who I was in Him. I did not know myself. My whole identity was tied to my relationship status, career, role in the family and the community. As a result, I became anything others wanted me to be. The Holy Spirit revealed this to me and had to '911' me into my true identity. The one outside all these human labels. The one which stands after all these things die off. He had to reveal this to me lest I backslide again.

A few of the tents we used for the weekend stay.

I started off slowly, but little by little, I finally started seeing that I am not my love life (or career life). That I am first a child of God, a co-heir with Christ, redeemed, forgiven, chosen for God's purpose and a royal priesthood. This was hard, given that I was a people pleaser. But the blood of Jesus? Y'all better stop sleeping on this!

I then needed to finally have it sink in that good works alone do not assure me space in heaven. Good deeds do not win God's heart.

After all, our righteousness to God is as filthy rags if our hearts are not truly in tune with Him. Mine was not-I can say that! So I needed to go through a deep cleanse. To understand the principles of grace and mercy. How God gave me what I do not deserve (eternal life) due to my iniquity because of His infinite goodness.

You can never make up for that, even if you try. Christ cannot be bought. He is part of the Holy Trinity, existent before time. How can you try to match His act of redemption through your own endeavors? Silly, right? Yet I lived a whole 15 years trying to.

I had to understand that I am not redeemed because of who I am but because of who God is. Church never taught me all this. The prayer recitations and novenas never revealed God to me in His true depth.

This is where I came to realize, as I close, that the reason why I kept backsliding and falling was not because I was weaker than everybody else, but because I had a poor revelation of the one true God.

I saw that my relationship with God could only grow in proportion to the revelation of who He is to me.

The closer I got to His mercy seat, the more I saw how merciful He truly is, and the more I stopped quenching the Holy Spirit by being in places that dishonor Him, the more I could hear Him speak audibly to me, the quicker my ears heard Him and the softer my heart became to His instructions. He allowed me to behold God in His true Glory. I started and I still cannot stop marveling at how powerful God is.

I no longer see Him as a military man. He is now a father to me, who corrects me when I stray but loves me so much that he can exchange nations for me. He wars on my behalf and sets a table for me before my enemies. He stops and fast forwards time for me when He knows the time is just right because He created time and owns its movements.

I saw that God can speak to me and forgive my sins without me having to kneel before a fellow human being to absolve me of my transgressions.

I saw that my relationship with God could only grow in proportion to the revelation of who He is to me. This broke me. I had to drink more from this cup.

Initial Table-flip

I was an angry new believer because 'church' never taught me relationship. It taught me perfection-which I can never attain. It taught me ritualistic acts of worship to appease a distant God. I was even more upset that many were and still are there, stuck in works because of dogma. Because they are afraid of asking the hard questions.

I am however thankful. I am thankful that I had to lose my life in order to gain Christ-and that is what will matter at the end of age.

I dropped the religious hat and moved into freedom through relationship and life has been rewarding since then!

Can we talk?

Perhaps you are facing a water-shed moment and you are much like me before. Lost. Wandering. Trying to figure it out.

I say to you-rest. Try talking with Jesus today like you would a friend, after all, that is who He is to us. Ask Him to open the eyes of your heart because you want to see Him. He will not let this request go unanswered.

It took 10 years for me, but God came right on time and I do not regret one thing. Try it. Relationship over religion works.