Quote:
Originally Posted by SpeakersCorner
I confess oneness was never my goal. What was? I think it was having a deeper experience of Christ, but maybe I'm just flattering myself. The real thing, I believe, was that Bethel experience I had way back when. It was awesome and terrible and life-changing. "Indiana" alluded to it in an above post.
That's really the whole thing, for me. That experience. Can't let it go.
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I still chase that experience, also. But I realize that the experience isn't based on the "proper ground", so-called. I no longer pursue Christ within a "proper church life". Looking back, that was a snare, and a distraction. Jesus was the piece of corn in the middle, but the corn was surrounded by a snare.
"My soul has escaped, as a bird from the snare of the fowler." Satan was a fowler and he used WL & Co to set a snare, of the "proper church life", to lure us in, thinking we could find "more Jesus", or a "deeper experience of Christ" in there than in "degraded Christianity". The reverse was true: the 'Jesus' we found was just a vapor; it was the excitement of the placebo effect. "We're in the Local Church/God's chosen ground/Here we have Christ as life/And blessings all abound". If we shouted it loudly and repeatedly enough, we really felt it! It was a charismatic experience, but ultimately the shouting has to stop and we have to find what's behind the curtain.
I remember it well, the experience of meeting in the LC, and don't regret it; it's part of the journey. But I'm SO grateful that one day the Holy Spirit thrust me out. I believe that ultimately, what we seek is not the Church, or the Move, or the Ministry, or the Building, or the High Peak Truth. What we Christians seek is the Man who was and is the Chosen One of God, the Heart's Delight of the Father. Setting up exclusive clubs, and judging those who don't meet our criteria for belonging, is to fall into a trap. In Luke 18:10, the story of the two men praying, the man who judged his neighbor was actually right: the other guy was indeed a sinner - disgusting, poor, and wretched. But God loved the sinful man, and by turning away in disgust the despiser rejected the opportunity to find God's love and mercy.
I don't regret my time meeting in the LC. But I do believe Jesus is much, much bigger than that; His love cannot be contained within their walls. So the search continues. I think of what Paul wrote: "Letting go of what is behind, and stretching forward to what is before."