another big decision

so it's official. i decided to switch churches. i can't decide if it was as hard of a decision as quitting my job in omaha and moving back to ames or not, but it sure makes it to the top of the list of hard decisions in my life. and perhaps making the decision won't be as hard as living with the decision that i made in the months to come... but i made it and that's that. i never wanted to be a statistic of those churches that gain new members simply by having people move back and forth between churches instead of having new people come to know and love Jesus, but i guess that statistic is deeper than i once thought. there's a why behind each of those people perhaps. the fear is still i don't really know if it will be better in this church than in the last. but i do know that something's gotta change. i just can't do it anymore. after being involved in this church for most of 5 years and wrestling with it for 2 perhaps enough is enough. God used it to teach me a lot over the years ... it gave me a solid foundation of the theology of the gospel and the biblical basis for mission it connected me with stellar people that i am so grateful for still am to this day!! it challenged me to be baptized sent me overseas gave me opportunities to lead bible studies of college gals there are many reasons to leave ... and perhaps many to stay. so i'm in need of prayer. more so now than perhaps ever before (or at least i am realizing my need now more than ever before). ask questions if you like... there's been lots of tears shed and wrestling with thoughts and emotions for what seems like a very long time.

true spirituality

good quotes from francis schaeffer's true spirituality ...

"the important thing about being born spiritually is to live"

"we do not come to true spirituality or the true christian life merely by keeping a list, but neither do we come to it merely by rejecting the list and then shrugging our shoulders and living a looser life"

"love is internal, not external. there can be external manifestations, but love itself will always be an internal factor"

"...desire becomes sin when it fails to include love of God or men. ... I am to love God enough to be contented; second i am to love men enough not to envy"

"contented and yet fighting evil" (wow challenging!)

"if the contentment goes and the giving of thanks goes, we are not loving God as we should, and proper desire has become coveting against God. This inward area is the first place of loss of true spirituality. the outward is always just a result of it"

"our death by choice in the present life ... is the saying no to self when our natural selves would desire acceptance by the alien world- a world in revolt against its creator and our lord"

" ... forgetting the fall is the fall" (yep ... i often forget that we live in a fallen world until Jesus returns... and that just complicates life)

"we wait for the resurrection of the body. we wait for the perfect application of the finished work of christ of the whole man. we wait for this, but on this side of the fall, and before christ comes, we must not insist on 'perfection or nothing' or we will end with nothing"

"prayer is always to be seen as a person-to-person communication, not merely a devotional exercise. indeed, when prayer becomes only a devotional exercise, it is no longer biblical prayer"

"the command is to love him, not just think about him, or do things for him. we are not to stop with a proper legal relationship-for example, to think of a man as legally lost, which he is, in the sight of a holy God-without thinking of him as a person. saying this, we can suddenly see that much evangelism is not only sub-christian, but subhuman-legalistic and impersonal."

"it is not wrong to be right, but it is wrong to have the wrong attitude in being right"

"my relationship with my fellowmen must always be personal. if i really love a man as i love myself, i will long to see him be what he could be on the basis of christ's work, for that is what i want or what i should want for myself on the basis of christ's work"

"christianity is not to love in abstraction, but to love the individual who stands before me in a person-to-person relationship. he must never be faceless to me or i am denying everything i say i believe. this concept will always involve some cost. it is not a cheap thing, because we live in a fallen world, and we ourselves are fallen"

"but for the christian, who does not need to have everything in human relationships, human relationships can be beautiful"

"the church is not a body that thinks up ideas; the church is a declarative statement of what God has revealed concerning himself in the scripture. ... the church should represent the supernaturally restored human race in reality"

"yes, faith can be taught, but only by exhibition"

"methods are as important as its message"

"there is no use talking of these things abstractly, without bringing them down to the real place where the battles are fought"

"we are commanded not only to meet together, but to help each other."

well perhaps i got carried away but there's so many more good quotes in this book. one that has really been hitting home for me is if i am insisting on perfection or nothing i will get nothing. wow. i recommend it whole heartedly. the moment i got done reading it i started it again ...