Quote:
Originally Posted by kumbaya
My grandfather was a pastor (in a denomination so no good according to my parents mindsets at the time) and I've recently heard he told my grandmother, aunt and uncle that, "Love will get our family through this," and "we are going to love them to death" when things were at an extremely difficult point in the late 70's early 80's. Back then, things were way more extreme. Some were saying to choose either family or the church, my parents wouldn't even enter home with Christmas trees, it was all very extreme. I don't remember any of that so at least it was kept hidden from me or the extremeness of it faded by the time I was in elementary school. I just say all that because I'm really just reminding myself (and others too) that is the NUMBER ONE priority and to pray that God gives you that LOVE every day, when it's hard. I know I have some "hard" days ahead where I'll need it!
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Dear Kumbaya,
I love your grandfathers' words, "
Love will get our family through this."
The bolded sentence above stood out to me,
and yes, that's what was continually presented to us in those days. The line from Revel. 18.4, "
Come out of her My people," was used for every context -- jobs, family, denominations, etc. There was a fever pitch to be separated from
everything to the church, Lee's church. W. Lee would twist Paul's salvation story to reinforce this mantra. Since the Lord asked him, "why are you persecuting Me," Lee went on to say that we can
never separate Christ and the church. Repeat
n-e-v-e-r. Our brain cells had been rewired to think this way.
But, after abuse, infighting, and endless nonsense, we did leave. I even started visiting poor, poor, Christianity. One morning I had an "epiphany" of sorts listening to the sharing. The minister said at one point, "
First the Lord, then our family, then our jobs and the church." Lights went off. My circuits got rewired.
Then I began to think about the deleterious effects on so many lives by placing Christ and the church inseparably together. Firstly, by filling our lives with endless church service and ministry messages, we got disconnected from the Lord Himself. Secondly, by filling our lives with endless church service and ministry messages, we didn't have family. By improperly connecting Christ and the Church, we ended up with only church, and not Christ or family.
Very convenient teaching for WL and the Blendeds!