Four tall-back, arm chairs sitting high on a platform. I knew I was in trouble, right then and there.
I started to squeal and squirm, remembering a sermon I once heard, “Always be weary of leaders who sits high above you on fancy, white, arm chairs.”
Thoughts of “religious spirits” danced through my brain. Painted hair, thick eye-lashed, make-up plastered on like Tammy Fay Bakker.
I thought about my “curse” with make-up and how it took me years to stop wearing lipstick, even to the gas-station…Because I was afraid of my face, afraid of people seeing me, naked, barren, real….raw.
We listened to songs on long benches. More than an hour of them. White haired woman greeting me in the bathroom prior to the service. Nice enough, but still my fragile psyche alluding them, avoided, feared….because of how they looked on the outside.
Fancy dresses, high heels, I somehow had sworn off churches with decorated presentations…And yet here I was, in one. What was I to do?
After a list of instructions by the pastor and over an hour of hymns with “thine” and “thous”…And yet, somehow imagining the pastor with torn jeans, an old t-shirt, and a redemptive testimony to match his trending attire seemed to satisfy my drifting mind.
The songs finally die. I turn my attention
to the reason why I was there, to witness a relative get baptized, recommitting her life to God. Young Mexicans season the congregation of white wrinkled skin and white hair. Still over a dozen join the church, and nearly as many get dunked before the speaking.
I think, here are white folks, and yet the poor and the needy line the first row, and are scattered freely, filling the congregation. Something just didn’t seem right.
Didn’t the hard streets this stain-glassed church reside on even know there were shooting nearly every weekend. Haven’t they heard of emergent theology, or the idea that the lower we get, the more people we often are capable of reaching? Wasn’t there an idea that these dark skinned kids saw beatings, stabbings, shootings, their parents fighting? People were trying to survive here…and yet, in a church like this, how were coming to Jesus en mass?
How could an old white guy possibly reach people like this? How could a fancy suit, erect arm-chairs, a “thine” and “thou” touch down to save souls barren, illegal, lost, and impoverished?
But then, he spoke. The one in a suit, with died slicked hair I had been seeing in ripped jeans and a groovy fashionable t-shirt. It was as if, the wind of God blew from his voice slaying all analyzing and ridiculing. My ears turned to listen, my heart jumped loud. My eyes fixed strong on the man with full power…
The one full of scripture and truth. The one, in fact the last one, I ever expected to see Jesus through.
And in this day and age, don’t we often want Jesus to come as we would like to see Him? Don’t we forget that the Holy Spirit is no respecter of persons?
Don’t we despise the Pharisees, and as a result are looking for a Savior who looks like how we might think he’d want to reach us…
And isn’t it then that God surprises us most, comes down like we least expect him, lands strong in the hearts we thought we’d never find Him; defying our logic, confounding our understanding…just to show us He is God and we are not...
He can use who He wants…and isn’t it quite often He chooses to use the ones we might least expect?
I get up from that service learning at five years old, the one speaking nearly died and had the voice of God speak audibly to Him. He told him, “You will preach my Word”.
At fourteen this pastor started preaching, and has preached now for 60 years. He also has a t.v. ministry, explaining the TBN-like stage production, chairs, make-up, and fancy suits.
We often think of legalism and religious spirits as white-washed tombs done up in fancy suits and hair that’s seemingly perfect. When if fact…
- A religious spirit can disguise itself in so-called freedom, in any kind of separating or dicing done in our very souls.
- It can hide in the ridiculing of any other church that doesn’t look like our own.
- It can put up walls saying men and women of God need to look and sound, and talk like us.
- It can lie, telling us that to be holy we must fit a formula…or rebel against a formula…
So, we judge, and divide, and hide our hearts, failing to learn about the True God who refuses to fit a mold.
I repented of my religious spirit that day. I have been repenting since.
For although I thought I came with freedom, I thought I was void of labeling and criticizing the church because I wore jeans and acted like God was a hypster…In reality, I was just as legalistic as someone who insisted on hardcover Bibles over Bible apps on cell phone, or insisting we wear dresses instead of biker leather or flip flops.
When in fact, the true Spirit of God is unstoppable, uncontrollable, uncontainable, un-labelable. and often comes in fullness of power in the last person we might expect.
How is a “religious spirit” hiding in your heart? Where have you put up walls? When have you last criticized or ripped apart in your thoughts, a church that didn’t look and act like yours?
13 Comments
Oh Jen, I hear you~!
Being convicted is unpleasant, but being released from religiosity is necessary for our continuing growth into Christ-like-ness.
I believe God will BLESS this post…and I am asking Him now that it will get to whoever needs such conviction.
Religious spirits are rife all through Christianity….we’re just used to associating them with Pharisaical things !
I love your honesty and integrity in sharing this.
It just goes to show God will use whomever He pleases, whenever He likes, for His own good purposes~!
Love you, precious daughter in the Lord.
xx
Oh wise Mary, I so agree. It’s time we blow down those walls we hide in to keep others out…whether they erect in secret, or in the very crevasses of our hearts.
Thanks for writing this Jen. It is an important eye-opener for me. Having recently moved from CA to a much more conservative state, I have been guilty of these pre-judgements. It can be a confusing and blurry line, can’t it? Susie
Susie – Wow, that must be a huge change! I think Seattle, where I come from, is much like California…priding itself on wall-less religion. Yet, just when I start thinking someone is too poor or rich, too illiterate or educated, too formal or too culturally relevant…He shakes my thinking and reveals that He can use anyone to preach His message.
How awesome of a God that nothing or no one can stop Him! Will be keeping you in my prayers as He leads you to the exact group of people He wants to connect you with!
Thanks Jen. The very first line of this post, about the “tall back chairs..” caught my eye, because we are now in Texas and the other day we saw a truck on the freeway with two ridiculously ornate tall back chairs in the back and I said that they were probably for a pastor and his “First Lady”. Then I felt guilty, but we still giggled about it. 🙂
Boy, did this post hit a nerve! The two biggest dangers after coming out of legalism (at least, that I see, after living and walking and breathing the delivered from its clutches) is to go too far in the other direction, casting all caution aside, and taking on an “anything goes and nothing is sin” attitude AND the second one is the danger of being drawn back in to yet another form of legalism. I think the only real way of standing fast in our liberty and not becoming entangled again in the yoke of legalism’s bondage is to keep our eyes upon JESUS and realizing how nothing we are without Him and to love as He loves…to not condemn or judge our brothers and sisters and to think like He did when the disciples came to Him so angry that they had found “others” performing miracles in His name. Jesus rebuked their anger, and He told them, in so many words, that if someone isn’t against Him, then they are for Him, and to leave it alone. These dividing walls among God’s church must come down, and it all starts with you and me, dear sister. I LOVED this post…thank you for sharing what God has brought you through and to…and thank you for your consistent obedience to Him. God bless you!
Woo Hoo! Preach it sister!! Isn’t that the truth! Too often, people can leave rules for rebellion and fall into the guise of “apparent freedom” which is really legalism reversed…Legalism condemning other churches. I wanted to jump up and down when you said, “Isn’t it time we are free from it, and our focus is simply Jesus…not the idiosyncrasies of how other people preach or worship!
Wisdom here in your comment friend. Thank you for sharing your heart and for your encouragement to keep on writing…even when it comes hard. Love your heart!
so glad I was your neighbor at the Weekend Brew this week, and stopped by to read this powerful reminder that we really can’t judge a book by its cover, as the saying goes. And that applies whether the cover is spiffy and polished, as well as if it’s banged up a bit. Good words!
Great analogy Kym! The cover doesn’t always reveal accurately, what’s in the heart…
I come from a very laid back, flip-flop wearing church. I pray that our arms are open wide to receive all, no matter their status, upbringing, race, etc. It’s so easy to see someone and judge their outward appearance. Asking God to give me eyes to see others as He does.
Barbie – I think I would LOVE your church! 🙂 But yes, that prayer, it keeps hitting me over and over, and I think is the very KEY to loving people…”Lord, help us see others as you do”.
It astounds me how much Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and yet we don’t realize that if we aren’t careful, we can be just like them. Our pride so easily helps us to be just like they were. We must be careful to examine the Scriptures and our hearts on this matter. Often the more we “do for God”, the easier it becomes to be religious, judgmental, and Pharisitical. We must strive to remain humble before both God and man. It’s difficult, for sure. Thanks for sharing your heart with us.
Heather – So agree, sometimes our works hinder our ability to humbly embrace the fullness of His grace…wherever it may be found!