As a natural extrovert whose first move is to speak then think, I've tried to limit my posts and speaking — at least recently. The honest truth is for most people, me included, nobody really cares what they're wrapped up in and what's going on in their life. And that's fair.
But I'd be remiss if I didn't share where I've been. Because if you've walked a road anything like mine, you already know how confusing it gets.
My great-grandmother attended a Pentecostal church and took me as a kid. People got up, ran around the pews, and some even clucked like chickens. My aunt and uncle attended an Assemblies of God church and they were getting down — crying and worshiping. Then for a three-year stretch my dad attended a Baptist church. No clapping. No hand raising. No gifts of the Spirit. Wooden pews, Sunday school, and sore butts.
After a five-year gap I started attending a non-denominational church that went from 200 people to 12,000 and full production mode. From there I spent the last eight years at a formerly Baptist mega church that has loosened the reins to feel a bit more non-denominational, but with guardrails.
I've attended full gospel churches. I've attended Sundays at Word of Faith churches with friends. I have friends who pastor Baptist churches, non-denominational churches, AG churches, and Word of Faith churches.
To top it all off, I married my wife who was raised Catholic and converted to Protestantism in her late teens and attended ORU to get her bachelor's degree.
Needless to say — I had a lot of different things going on in my mind when it came to religion, God, heaven, and my role as a believer.
I didn't know if I was supposed to become a monk, a pastor, or an evangelist. If I was supposed to suffer or be instantly healed. To be poor or become super wealthy. The challenge was always — go towards God, or go towards man teaching the lifestyle I wanted to live comfortably. That is warned about in the New Testament.
I've been to Israel. I've walked where Jesus walked. I've stood on the hill where it's thought Jesus stood and taught, overlooking the Sea of Galilee.
I accepted Jesus at 11 and was baptized. And then I watched my world fall apart less than two years later when my father died in a car wreck.
All of the churches had and still have well-meaning, loving pastors and staff. But they can't all be right. Some emphasize the minor. Some emphasize the middle. Some emphasize the major while discarding the minor and middle.
We don't lack for information. We have it in abundance. And that's actually the downfall.
No clarity. Just ammo upon ammo of why this trumps that, and then that trumps this. The people who think they discovered an insight that nobody else has and live there in pride the rest of their life.
The enemy loves to let the vast majority of believers keep doing what they're doing. Less work for him. We are doing his work without knowing it as he smirks in the distance. We've done pretty well with allowing pride, lust, and hate in on our own. And now we've become so insensitive to it, we've just embraced it and its temporary warm feelings and prideful thoughts.
We've been fearful of AI because it could lead us off track. I'm afraid we've been way off track before it arrived.
To be honest, for me personally — I embraced that it was not perfect and needs guardrails and verification, but it allowed me to dig into the original text in its original format, spoken into a specific people at a specific time for a specific purpose. And then and only then can you see how it is speaking to you and your life in today's world. Not cherry-picking verses. Not misinterpreting popular scriptures that have become slogans.
That's been my whole journey.
Reaching that stage in life where I say — here's what I've walked through. Here are all the ingredients that I've experienced and been taught over my life. What's the real truth and how do I walk it out? And if I feel this way, it's likely others feel this way too.
How can I deliver the truth from what we've walked through to this point? To deliver the true Gospel in its original story with no detours, so it can open our eyes and be what it was intended to do — and be the light of the world.