agreeing with caryle clear--hypocrisy (fwd)

• Messages sorted by:[ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]

The author of the message below asked me to forward this note to the
list anonymously.

Richard Masoner
--

Forwarded message:
To: "'richardm@cd.com'" <richardm@cd.com>
Subject: RE:  agreeing with caryle clear--hypocrisy
Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 12:22:02 -0500

Dear friends,

Recently, my family and I went through the most painful experience of
our walk with the Lord.  After years of attending our home church, we
were unhappy with some of the things that were beginning to creep in and
felt the release of the Lord to leave our home.  In attempting to make a
peaceable change, we were asked to leave the church and were later hurt
deeply by some things our pastor said about us and did to us.

We were crushed.  Our faith in the Church was shaken, and our faith in
the Lord was tried.  Here was a man of God who had treated us unfairly
without cause, a man we had trusted with our souls.  He now seemed
determined to destroy us, even trying to persuade the nieghboring pastor
not to let us come to his church.

I remember telling my wife the first day, "I don't know if I want to
even be Apostolic anymore" but the Lord checked my spirit.  Those were
hard days.  We were so discouraged and devastated.

Later, after much prayer and shedding of tears, I realized that I
couldn't blame God or the Apostolic church for what had happened to us.
We are all human!  While I feel that we didn't receive the love and
understanding from our pastor that we should have at that critical time,
I could not look at the situation and say, "The UPC doesn't have any
love in it."

We must all realize that pastors and saints are humans.  Sometimes, even
when trying to do the right thing, they make mistakes that hurt people.
I pray for my old pastor that he sees the error he has made, but even if
he doesn't that doesn't make the UPC a bad organization or UPC ministers
bad people.  

Thank God, we did find a pastor who was willing to open up his arms and
a church filled with saints who healed our broken spirits.  This church
is also UPC, and we are blessed to know that those problems and feelings
aren't everywhere.  

I am sorry that it is true that God's people sometimes wound us.
Christians aren't always like Christ, but just because we've run into a
PART of the body that doesn't act like we think it should, doesn't mean
that the rest of the body isn't healthy!  Don't broad-brush
organizations just because you suffered in an isolated situation.

God is good and His Church is alive and well!

God bless all of you firends!