When Crisis Meets Faith

In this article we will walk into the next step usually encountered by those who experienced Part 1 and 2 of "Leave or Stay". 

After the spiritual honeymoon and becoming settled in to the church routine, you became a respected, stable member of a local church. You saw many people come and go, even pastors and leaders. You worked to support and encourage others through many difficulties and you gave of your time and ability. One day you realized "WOW! I've been a Christian for 14 years! Where did the time go?"

You raised your kids in church, some of you struggled with unsaved spouses, some did not. You saw divorce in the church, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, dishonest financial deeds, leadership corruption, and other un-Christian actions around you but you held on to your faith, your God, and your church.

Then came your own crisis of faith.
It may have come as a phone call at 1am.
It may have been your company going bankrupt, getting fired or layed off, an unfaithful spouse, the death of a loved one, a child on drugs, a doctors report, the loss of a home, business, or a lawsuit, -and the sense of life turning against you.
It may have been the words "I don't love you anymore".

It may have been your pastor going into adultery with one or more women in the church, it may have been a pastor getting away with large amounts of the church's money or property, it may be that no one was held accountable and they seemed to get away with it. 

It may have been your spouse or child saying 'I'm not going back", or seeing the serial abuse and mistreatment of other members to the point you realized something is/was seriously wrong.
It may be the acceptance of new doctrine or practices that are contrary to the traditions of your faith, it may be some really "weird stuff" happening in church.

It may have been a nuclear shock of discovering your child had been molested by a youth minister, it may have been the discovery and cover-up of an affair either in the ministry or the family. 
It may have been a sharp conflict with another church member. -Or it may even have been things you read in the Bible that now you cannot reconcile with what your church does or does not teach.

It may have been your own lack of walking in a close relationship to the Lord.
It may have been the cares and business of life that slowly caused a drifting away from what you first had with the Lord and the day came when you realized your very soul was in jeopardy.

It may have been the day your world fell apart and what had always happened to someone else now happened to you.

One or more of the above scenarios played out a process in your life that turned you into a lit fuse on the way to an explosion. 

The phone call, the letter, the email or text, the policeman standing at your door and suddenly the last strings that held your world together were gone.   At first you are stunned; denial and disbelief kick in and with it, a numbness of emotion and feeling. The world looks different, people appear strange, there is an unreality to life and the realization that there is an unstoppable process taking you into an unknown future.

Depending on the circumstances ranging from the shock of finality, or hoping for a second opinion, or making a call to a lawyer or other professional, or to another church member to compare notes, reality settles in and you try to cope.  A lot of them listen, offer a few words of encouragement, but nothing can heal the wound you have taken.

You come to the realization others cannot understand, help, or solve the problem. And even when you are among the others, you still feel alone.  You battled anger, resentment, "WHY ME?", blame others, blame yourself, and cannot find any of the answers or understanding that you need. 

These scenarios happen to people every day, in church and out. We watched it happen over the years many times in the lives of those arround us, and then one day, one month, one year, it happened to us.

Convergance.
It began with the death of my dad, our oldest son turning 13, and a series of events that felt like a slow, agonizing death-which, in reality it was. It turned into a death and what Jesus spoke about on more than one occasion:
Mat 10:39   He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.

You see, we would never had made the changes we needed to make, that God desired us to make, and to return to Him and the careful study of His Word. Yes, the very crisises that caused such great hurt and sorrow became the very instruments God used to bring us back to Him. I found God on my knees in our living room and soon after, He began to challenge my wife and I regarding every tradition and concept we had taken for granted.

...and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.