“a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.”
God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.
The Church and my participation in it played a very important role in my awakening and nurturing towards God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.
However, as I matured in my understanding of the heart and intent of God and began to leave childish things behind, I realised that I had outgrown the games, fables and manipulative preaching of men within the Church system. The longer I stayed, the more I got sucked into the outward forms that are nothing to do with worship.
We don’t often start off intending to become mere ‘Church goers’ rather than true worshipers of God in spirit and in truth, but that is what happens when you outgrow the class and yet refuse to move on. Meanwhile, tagging along on a Sunday and getting ‘involved’ allowed me to hide away from the reality of the vanity, emptiness and wasteland that life had become – ‘my people perish from lack of vision’.Staying within this camp had become for me escapism with the ritual of musical worship, exercising of ‘my gifts’ and acceptance within a highly organised and supportive social network.
Therefore to truly reconnect with the God and Father of my beginnings (in Christ) – forsake not your first love – I had no choice but to break camp. Leaving the escapism and ritual behind, I now had to face the wilderness alone with God – a lonely and seemingly barren place! It was miserable and scary for a season and often a painful and uncomfortable place.
Nevertheless it was worth it! Indeed, eye has not seen nor mind conceived the things that God has prepared for those that love and heed the voice of God within.
If it is time for you to break camp, then move on to seek and do the will of God!
Are you willing to take the risk? Can you pay the price? Remember your First Love. He never left. He is still there knocking on the door to be let in.