I just want to know...

I look at my experiences 'attending church' over my life, and I read about the church in the Bible and keep saying to myself, "There has just got to me something more that I am missing!"

I was very young when God put a hunger in my heart. I don't know exactly when He put it there. My family attended church when I was very young, but stopped some time while I was still small. I learned of salvation through a lady from an organization that taught 'religious instruction' for public school kids in elementary school. Then I knew I was being drawn to Him. I was about ten or eleven. I grew up in a household that was Christian in one sense, but there was little in the way of seeing it. We had stopped 'attending' church, and maybe that was good, maybe not. but I can remember laying awake early Sunday morning listening to the radio preachers because I hungered to know and understand the Lord.

I eventually started attending a church where my Grandparents went... in spite of the fact my parents did not attend. I grew in understanding and I formed a world-view on the foundation of the Bible which would sustain me through the temptations of Highschool and College. I became more involved in ministering to others and even took on 'leadership' roles in the church as I got older. I started to see the 'humanness' of the organized church at this point and the clean simple beauty of what I had pictured as the church started to be clouded. Yet, I think this was God's plan to bring back this hungar.

I began attending a smaller church that really wanted to walk out a 'New Testiment' model of the church. It was about this time that I was married and we began to seek the Lord together. However, as the years went by, many of the things I desired to see and know in a church that was seeking to be like those seen in the pages of Acts stated to seem to fall away. The 'church' began to take on elements of those other churches around us. "Look at what they are doing to minister!, Let's do that too!" seemed to be the battle cry of that church. I had put aside my hungar and desire to see a true New Testiment church and had sucumed to the 'reality' that this is just how church is... there is no more.

Thank God that He sent new people into my life that reminded me of my hungar! I began to re-read things in the Bible that I had let fall from memory. I relalized I had once again put out the fire, the desire that God had placed in my heart to know HIm better and see Him work amoung His people... His Church... in ways that would be miraculous!

I just want to know what it looks like to see these things in person... To know what Jesus really means when he describes his Church...

John 3: 7-8 You should not be surprised at my saying, 'You must be born again.' The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."


I want to see that it does not require 'seeker sesitive' or 'target marketing' to reach unbelievers. To be a part of a gathering of believers where unbelievers see the presence of God rather than a ceremony or a well presented moral teaching...

1 Cor 14:24-25
But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!"


I want to know what it is like to have my mind spirit and strength focused on Him and not be distracted by all the artificial practices that men have added to the church.

Mark 12:29-34
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."
"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."
When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And from then on no one dared ask him any more questions.

I just want to see His church being different... being alive... being something that people will stop calling religion and see only as living loving people directed by the Creator.

I just want to know what that is like.

I think that if we do not give up and settle for man's best interpretation of what the church is supposed to be... and simply live it out. We can BE the church and never again want to settle for anything less than the amazing thing that God has called His Church to be.