Starving in the Wilderness? Not at All.

Yesterday I met with a group of believers from various places via Skype to have a little study time, to pray and get to know each other. Most of us are out of the visible church, some left on our own, some were asked to leave. Imagine, being kicked out of the assembly of believers because you point out the truth to the leadership. It happens.

Will God leave us to starve in the wilderness? No. As crazy as it sounds, the opposite has proven to be true. In the effort and process to reveal the false doctrines of our time, and all that subject entails, the more I have grown in my own faith. It is in the times of study – the chasing after the truth as if it were gold has proven more precious and more valuable than any time I spent warming a pew. Don’t get me wrong. If the pastor you hear every week can present the truth of the gospel without allowing in the wiggly worms, stay there in the fellowship. I am not against church as a whole. I am against the thing it has become – yes “the thing” – a morphing into a shape and sound it was never intended.

So, let me encourage you. If you have come to that place and have found yourself out-churched, please understand that God has led you to this place to teach you who He truly is, and all that He has for you to become. This is not done for your glory, but for His. This is done so that you can effectively reach the lost, those unsaved and those who are still operating under the veil of apostasy, for those who still have ears to hear.  This has been done so that you will no longer be dependent on a person to spoon feed you or so that you will not longer have the  need to follow after another person for the truth. God never intended for one man to rule over another. In the same way He never intended for His child to be spiritually dependent on another. Consider these words of Jesus –

John 14:16-17 (NASB)

“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;

¹⁷that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.

You have not been left alone.

Remember, we have been called to lay down our own lives and pick up the way of the cross. It is not found on a comfy cozy pew while holding a steaming cup of coffee. No. The cross and the choice we have made to follow Christ is a place of suffering, a place of agonizing death. It is the narrow path that few find. The upside of that position is that none of us will walk it alone because our God will never leave or forsake His own.

I believe the following verse refers to Paul’s suffering in his body but hear his words in where he places his hope. Let us also be so convinced.

2 Timothy 1:12 (NASB)

For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.