This morning my pastors blessed me with a gift card as a thank-you for my service towards helping them with their church. They had struggled initially with purchasing the gift card for me because my loving Pastors have been walking with me, every step, as I blog my way into more healing, and away from Spiritual Abuse. They read every post that I write and look forward to each post as I openly speak about the hurt, abuse, good times and low times that I went through. Because they have joined alongside me in my journey they are sensitive as to where I have been, but they aren’t afraid of my wounds and they don’t care that I wear my scars proudly as a proclamation that I am no longer the condemned but the free. There is no condemnation from them about where I have been and how I have been treated at the hands of others like I have received from others before them. For that unconditional love and acceptance, I am grateful.
To some church leaders a hurt, bruised, and abused church member is someone who is only to be treated with caution. I’ve heard the cautionary phrase, “hurt people, hurt people” one too many times from the mouths of church leaders that somehow seems to disqualify an individual as useful to the body of Christ. Too many times the bruised and wounded in Christ end up being our homeless in Christ as they wander from church to church looking for somewhere to call home. I encourage you reader to be like those who open their arms to the homeless, the bruised, the battered, the wounded warriors in Christ, both in the physical and the Spiritual. It is time that we, the church, started acting like we are the church, and as ambassadors of Christ, open the doors of the embassy, which is our hearts, to the wounded and hurting of this world.
This is a shout-out to my Pastors….You have now entered my Blogging Zone…(cue the sci-fi music)
I totally understand looking for a church to call home and cannot find one, the final blow was the pastor that made the indecent proposal to me. This was the man that Baptized me. Does this mean that my baptism didn't take? Will I still go to Heaven? Am I still washed of my sins if the man that dipped me is a pervert?
ReplyDeleteTo Anonymous above:
ReplyDeleteI am sorry to read that you were victimized by a lecherous individual hiding behind ministerial credentials.
Romans 10:9 states that "if you say with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and have faith in your heart that God has made him come back from the dead, you will have salvation".
In addition, Colossians 2:12 explains that "you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead".
As the above scriptures clearly show, if you truly believe that Jesus Christ is LORD, you have confessed your faith and publicly identified with His death, burial and resurrection. Yes, your baptism "took", if you truly believed at the time. But being baptized does not assure you are going to Heaven. Your acceptance of Christ's finished work of redemption accomplished by His death on the cross, His burial and His resurrection from the dead is the only thing that will assure your eternal life in Heaven. Your sins are washed by the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross, not by the waters of baptism.
If the above is true for you, you ARE saved and you DO have eternal life with Christ in Heaven. PERIOD.
Blessings to you.