Knowing Better...

There is this famous phrase "you do better when you know better", and what I'm going to write about tonight is my journey to knowing better.

Last year Jonathan and I went through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University & that marked the beginning of us knowing better when it came to financial decisions. We learned a wealth of knowledge about how money works, how to save, spend, invest, and give. We learned a new phrase "Live like no one else...So you can LIVE like no one else". By the end of the course we were changed people equipped with the knowledge and know how to "do better". So, now when I feel tempted to go and do something stupid with my money I just can't, because I know better! It's a blessing that I know better, but sometimes it feels like a curse when I want to be blissfully ignorant and have my own way. As foolish as that sounds, and even though I know better, I still fall prey to wanting what I know I can't have!

We live in a "have it your way society" and when every body's doing it... it's hard to be the odd man out. However, God made me one of the most hard-headed, stubborn individuals to ever walk this earth & most of the time I'm thick-skinned enough to withstand the opinions (ehm...) of others. However, the problem with being this stubborn & knowing better is that I CAN'T have it my way! I have to wait. I have to be patient. I have to walk outside the lines when everyone else seems to be walking inside of them. I know that what I'm doing is the right thing for me and my family, but nobody ever wants to talk about how isolating that can feel.

When I start feeling like this the temptation is always to say "woe is me"...but that's pretty pointless and pathetic. To pull myself out this funk I choose to go back and review why it is we are doing what we are doing. For instance, we are digging our way out of debt so that we can change our family tree! Jonathan and I BOTH came from families that didn't know diddly-squat about money & we have purposed to do better than that for our children. We will suffer for this short while so that our children will not have to carry this heavy burden later on. See, when I look at it that way it's so much easier to carry on! Besides, we won't always be living in the "struggle" phase of our lives. One day (very soon) we will be on the other side of our stupidity (because debt is dumb!) & walking in the glorious field of freedom! THAT'S what I have to think about when the road seems long and trying (like right now!). That's the kind of "hope" I can believe in ;-).

Another area where we have decided to change our life dramatically is in our decision to walk away from "institutional church". I'll share more on what that means in future posts, but suffice it to say we are definitely walking "outside the lines" on this one. However, after years, no...a LIFETIME , of pain and suffering within the four walls of organized religion we made the decision to follow our hearts and make a change. This decision was not one we took lightly, nor hastily. It has been a very long process full of ups and downs that has finally lead us to the place we are today. It hasn't been easy, but once again....when you know better, you do better.

The main reason we made this change was for our family. We simply could not continue down the road we were on, and we had to make a change before we ended up repeating the same mistakes over and over. We wanted to get this one right for our children, and for future generations. We longed, once again, to change our family tree and leave our children with a hope and a future that they could be proud of. We were also weary from the struggle that Sunday mornings had become, and we were ready for a change.

In the course of changing the way we viewed our finances we also found that some of the same thinking applied to our spiritual lives as well. If you have ever listened to Dave Ramsey you've heard him say "debt is normal....be weird". That saying makes a lot of sense, so why do we let the parallel stop with finances? Jonathan and I had spent our entire married life putting up with one failed Church experience after another until we finally said ENOUGH...NO MORE! That's when we began to ask ourselves "what is broken about the way we are doing Church?". Then, one day I heard someone pose the question "What happens when 'the Church' leaves the building"? That's when I knew we were getting close to some answers! Everywhere we looked we saw discontentment, pain, and suffering within the Church. It could be said that "Struggle" seemed to go hand and hand with the word "Church"...so we began to say "something has to change!".

Most people think of "the Church" as a building. We ask each other "where do you go to Church?". What we expect to hear is an answer that describes a location...a building...a place where we go to and park our cars as well as our butts. But...what if I said "I am the Church"? What if the word "Church" was used to describe a relationship rather than a building? In truth, the Bible never defines "the Church". Instead it uses various metaphors to describe it. Do you know what the chief metaphor for the Church is that dominates the New Testament? It's the family. WE are the body of Christ...not some building! When Jonathan and I began to grasp that fact we were filled with a new hope that things were going to change for our family. No more pain...no more suffering...we had finally landed on something rooted in truth!

What we found came straight from the word of God, which, by the way...NEVER returns void! What we found were verses from scripture that said: "Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition" (Matt 15:6) & "Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men...You are experts at setting aside the commandments of God in order to keep your tradition" (Mark 7:8-9). What we had noticed throughout our years of pain and suffering in institutional Church was that the one thing that stopped the Word of God dead in it's tracks was...(da, dum, dum!!!!) TRADITIONS!

["In so many ways, religious tradition has shaped our minds. It's captured our hearts. It's framed our vocabulary. So much so that whenever we open our Bibles, we automatically read our current church practices back into the text."] -Frank Viola.

When we sought to change our thinking and our circumstances we discovered something beautiful. It's called "Simple Church", "Organic Church", or simply "House Church", and it has changed our lives! It has made us hunger for the Word of God in a whole new way & it has connected us with some amazing people that all have something wonderful they bring to the group. In short, the Simple Church is free of the ego-messaging models of hierarchical leadership that have turned the word "Church" into something so synonymous with "suffering". What we have found is that the Church is not a business...it's a family. When we followed our instincts and our desires to be part of a community what we found is that the passion for community is contagious!

["House Churches are revolutionary because they incarnate this radical teaching that all are gifted and all are ministers. They offer some hope for healing the body of Christ from some of its worst heresies: that some believers are more valuable than others, that only some Christians are ministers, and that the gifts of the Spirit are no longer to function in our age. These heresies cannot be healed in theory or in theology only. They must be healed in practice and relationship in the social form of the church"] -Reimagining Church/ Frank Viola

I'll be honest, the only part that's been tough about this transition is the reactions we sometimes get from other Christians. We've been accused of lacking Biblical wisdom and discernment, or following some "fad". We've even had people joke (at least I hope it was a joke!) that this sounds like some flaky fringe group or cult! All this because we are doing something different. However, let me be clear, this is not about being a rebel of some sort. It's not about being unwilling/unable to submit to authority either. This is about a desire to seek God in a pure and un-filtered way. This is about letting God be the head of the Church and putting our meetings back into the hands of the Holy Spirit rather than under the domain of strong personalities. It's about taking the performance aspect out of Church and allowing yourself the opportunity to experience God in a very real way. It's about realizing that being "different" is sometimes the best indicator that you are right on track for changing your life for the better! This is about doing better... because we know better!