I follow a great blog by Addie Zierman who is coming out on Oct. 15 with her first book: When We Were on Fire. I highly recommend it as I am getting it myself! It is a memoir about her life as a Christian "on fire" for God. Oh, I know how that feels like! I was like that in college. I was in Campus Crusade for Christ, you know, the ones with the little orange booklet, "The Four Spiritual Laws." I was heavily involved for three years until I burned out. I went to weekly meetings, bible study, twice weekly prayer meetings, and leadership training. I looked like I had it together but inside I was questioning my own salvation. I was dismayed at the divide between the Christian groups and denominations. I had friends on both sides of the aisle, but was told by some on Crusade that THEY were the only right group, THEY were the ones who witnessed right, THEIRS were the only right church. Added to this was the pressure from my Bible study leader to witness and lead a Bible study of my own. But I felt like a salesman when I witnessed, and not particularly honest either. We would approach people asking them what they thought about the little orange booklet. But I felt like I was lying, we didn't care, we just wanted to convert. Writing this now, when I have never written it before and seen it in print, makes me feel like what a horrible Christian I was, what a hypocrite.
Needless to say, I finally quit, believing that Crusade had become my god, not God. I had to go back to square one. And I did. Thank you God!
I still regret being so pushy in my old Crusade days when I was "on fire." I hope and pray that I didn't push anyone further away from God than to. I still see the divisiveness in the church, and it saddens me that we allow this to dim our light to the world. I hate to admit I do this too. It's so easy to be judgmental, isn't it?
When We Were on Fire
4 comments:
Thanks so much for sharing this Amy. I felt the same way about "witnessing" -- pushy, dishonest, fake. For all my years of "on fire" life, I never prayed someone into heaven, and it always made me feel like a failure. Thankful, too, to have lost something of this and found a new way to understand God.
Thanks so much for joining the linkup! So glad to have read your words!
Thank you for your response! And for creating this syncroblog so that we could share in our own experiences and be reminded that we are not alone.
Amy,
When I saw that you participated in Addie’s synchroblog I thought I should invite you to participate in a monthly synchroblog that I am a part of.
It’s made up of a home-grown group of bloggers who like to write on topics of post-modern faith & life. This group is open to anyone who is interested in participating. We value respectful conversation and dialogue while honoring our differences. We share links & try to learn from each other.
Some of the people that originally participated in the synchroblog no longer blog and I am trying to reach out to people like you who are currently passionate about blogging in order to keep our monthly synchroblog relevant and vital.
If you are interested in joining us you can join the facebook group and receive monthly invitations to the synchroblog. Here is that link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/114506961937378/
And you can find our website (which you can subscribe to if you want to receive an email when we post the monthly theme announcement/invitation) here: http://synchroblog.wordpress.com/
(You can see all of the themes that we have covered in the past on our website in order to get an idea of what we do)
Thank you! I will have to check that out!
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