Don't let go until you are blessed

Many thanks to john pavlovitz and his ministry.  
This is my response to his post: The Faith Crisis Epidemic in America:

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I agree, there is a Faith Crisis Epidemic in America.

And as challenging, saddening, and confronting as this all is, 

I believe it is (in the big picture) good news.

The body of Christ is called forward.

These things just don't cut-it anymore - for more and more Christians:

- Just intellectually believing some things about God, 

- Just socially gathering with others who believe as we do, 

- Just praying for change, but basically wanting to stay the same 

- to not grow and deepen spiritually, 

- to not die and be reborn spiritually every day, 

- to not walk with Jesus  - who is here, now spiritually - in our real lives, step-by-step ...

These things just don't cut-it anymore - for more and more Christians.

Bless all the cultural Christians encouraging horrible thoughts and behaviors, and complicit in mundane atrocities... 

for helping so many see: 

just doing religion - even religion in the name of Christ - just doesn't cut it any more.

We are called to grow up in God.

And growing pains are normal.

And just like adolescence, just like early adulthood 

(just like most stages of life, and the transitions between them ; )

This stage of spiritual growth, this transition is for many tumultuous, confronting, painful, fear inducing, full of doubt, insecurity, un-sureity...

The good news is 

- nothing is wrong, 

- we are still children of God, always have been, always will be

- we are still dancing our lives with and within Spirit - there is nowhere else to go, there IS nowhere else.

It's just really hard, for most of us, to spiritually grow up.

The good news is 

- there is Abundant Life beyond the old structures, formulas, belief systems, identifications...

It's just really hard, for most of us, to spiritually grow up.

It helps, I believe, to have mature folks - folks a bit ahead on this spiritual path - around to say:

- It's ok, you're ok, just keep going.

- There is a method to the madness - you don't see it yet, that's ok.

- Do what you have to, to stay in the game. And 

- Keep choosing Light, Love, Truth,  Life, the Way that is uniquely yours. (Whatever of these words/realities that make any sense, choose that.)

God is still here, 

but God isn't who you thought God was.

Your Path is still here, 

it just isn't the Path you thought it was.

It's ok, God is bigger, your Path is better, than you ever thought  

-> you can live-into that.

Yes, for now it sucks... just keep going.

We cannot see the Glory that is before us, that is within us...

until we do.

And until the sun rises again, and the Light shines - we just have to press-on through the darkness.

So much BS can fall-away, old belief-systems and formulas, and structures and identity...

But meanwhile you have experienced God in amoung all the claptrap.

You have experienced the presence of God and the reality of God's unending love for you, along the way.  

Hold on to your direct experience of God - in the past, in the present and for the future...

-> Hold on to that without trying to understand it. 

-> Hold on to the hem of God's robe, to the experience of God's trailing Glory.

-> Just hold on, and follow, bumble-around, trust even though you may not know the way or understand the goal.

Yes, for now it sucks, just keep going.

You may have heard:

Our God is a consuming fire, who burns up everything that is not God
(I have more to say about this central theme, on another blog) 

This can be excruciating.
(from the Latin: crux, cruc- ‘a cross’)
And yes, we must pick up our cross if we want to follow Jesus!
We just don't know ahead of time what the cross will look-like... surprise :)

This IS the ride you signed up for - deepening into God, maturing in God, bringing the Light into the world, following Jesus...

It might seem like you are getting the opposite, going in the opposite direction - but you are not, 

so I recommend that you ask God to help you relax and not fight it - it will go easier on you.

I encourage you to 

Walk out into the seeming void,
you will not fall forever, you will find the rock beneath...

The Rock beneath is your more direct expereince of the presence and love, the inviting/leading and sweet nurturing of the Living God.

No matter what you are experiencing, 

please keep going.

I encourage you to 

be willing to let go of everything, anything, 

except God alone - not theories, structures, formulas, belief systems... identities laid upon God - 

just God alone.

And don't let go until you are blessed.

Blessings on your unique journey,

Wendy

PS - My favorite Christian Teacher, the late Dr Bruce Morgan (who - by his life, his research and honest sharing - gave me encouragement to live-through so much darkness... into so much Light)

shared this many times, and I share: this quote from Jung - in the hopes it may encourage:

"Dear Frau Frobe,

...There can be no resolution, only patient endurance of the opposites which ultimately spring from your own nature. You yourself are a conflict that rages in itself and against itself, in order to melt its incompatible substances, male and female, in the fire of suffering, and thus create that fixed and unalterable form which is the goal of life. Everyone goes through this mill, consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or forcibly. We are crucified between the opposites and delivered up to the torture until the 'reconciling third' takes shape. Do not doubt the rightness of the two sides within you, and let whatever may happen, happen. The apparently unendurable conflict is proof of the rightness of your life. A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for the angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels.

With kindest regards,

C.G. Jung"

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