go back to church

I myself can say with attending church I once was able to keep a clear mind and focus leading to me having access money to do what I wanted and needed to do. Versus not going for a while, I began to lose focus, money and time. I believe its more so of what you attend for but must be all the positive reasons.

As I have stated I am not religious by any means. And I will be the first to say I do not support the intentions of the church. But I have found that there are churches that are inviting to me. When I take the time to go to church it is a way to stop from the hustle and bustle of life and acknowledge the Lord.

I’m so happy I decided to go back to church. This past week has been great.

Friday I went to LifeGroup, which I decided to sign up for kind of spur of the moment (for me, that is- I’m sure it was average timing for most people, but I normally spend weeks THINKING about doing something haha). I used to have horrific social anxiety, and I think I can still fall in to that sometimes- so going into a house full of strangers for 3 hours would have been out of the question 5 years ago. Now? Sure, it was a little awkward at first, but man…I’m so happy I went! I met some amazing people and am looking forward to future meetings.

I didn’t go to bed until 4:30 this morning, so I was nervous about being able to wake up on time- or worse, waking up when my alarm goes off, but being so grumpy from lack of sleep that I decide to stay home & sleep in.

God supplied me with plenty of rest though, and when my alarm went off, I woke up with ease.

Church itself was great. Relevant as ever, and I’m continuing to meet new people and start to build upon relationships. It’s exciting. There’s so much potential for change here, it’s incredible.

God is good :) He’s continuing to show me that all I have to do is show up with a willing heart…all I have to do is be there, and HE will orchestrate everything. He will cause me to meet people I need to meet, hear what I need to hear, and tug my heart when it needs to be tugged.

But’s it not true. I did have a church in colorado that I really loved but I still only went to it occasionally. I want to find a church that I will go to every sunday and really be involved in!

So I got a random urging to go to church this last Sunday, and I’m so happy I did. I think I’ll be able to stay connected this time.

I’m going to give my self 4 months to mark this goal as complete. Obviously, not saying I have to be there EVERY sunday for 4 months- because things often come up…but I want to be there for the better part of 4 months before I mark it as complete, so as to be able to ‘trust’ myself that I’ve truly made that commitment.

Exciting :)

I’ve started watching sermons online from the church I plan on going back to, and it’s completely reenergized me. The only reason I stopped going was because I was having a problem being consistent in the past and I felt bad about that. It created some strange fear in me- kind of a cross between a fear of letting people down, and a fear of looking stupid- I suppose it was also a fear of looking insincere. I just felt so bad about myself when I would miss a week or two.

Anyways. I’ve let that fear keep me out of church long enough. I’m so inspired by the messages, I’m so encouraged- so challenged…I desperately need to get back to church.

My sleep schedule is horrendous, but I plan on changing it slowly over the remainder of the week. My plan is to go back Sunday. It’s going to take a lot of prayer to ignore the lies that the devil is telling me- the lies that say I’m not good enough to go back- that I’ll just keep screwing it up, that people will think badly of me…because they are just that…LIES.

This church is full of amazing people, people whom I’ve NEVER had a bad experience with. There is no shame there. I also firmly believe that they will help hold me accountable so I WON’T continue to screw up.

The only thing going against me here is fear put in me by the Enemy. I love the messages, love the people, love the worship…the ONLY challenge is fear that is founded on LIES. If I can remember that, I’ll be just fine :)

I found the perfect church in 2007. I started going, but then became inconsistent. I felt really bad about that and I just suddenly stopped going. Started again in early 2008, but same story.

I really need to get over the mental-block I’ve put in the way and just get on with it! The church is amazing and the people were absolutely wonderful- I’m not sure what my problem is!

It has been almost two years since I attended church. I loved church at one time and was even doing some teaching. I was very involved, read my Bible regularly and was always studying to find a new lesson to teach. Then all of sudden…that was it. It was a very small country church and our pastor left because the congregation was in total disagreement with a doctrine he was teaching, but I won’t get into that. We tried to keep the church up for awhile on our own but just couldn’t make it work. Well, we probably could’ve…we just didn’t try hard enough. I have been to a couple other churches but always seem to find something that I don’t agree with. I do not like the political aspects of ‘religion’ and don’t want to be labeled with a denomination. I also find that there is alot of gossip in the churches and people are sometimes focused more on what you are wearing or what you have done in your past than they are on the fact that you are at their church. I also don’t like ‘memberships’. Why do you have to become a member of a church? My name is written in the Book of Life, why does it have to be written in a church’s book? I don’t know, I guess I seem very cynical and hard to please but while I know that emotion is good in the church, it seems to me that alot of them run on pure emotion and that there is no actual Bible teaching going on. At any rate, I would love to find a church that I am comfortable in and that is teaching the Bible as it is, not their interpretation of it. I actually think I may have been called to teach and have ran from it. That I’m not sure about.

I made plans to go to church with my friend this Sunday. She is Catholic and I really don’t want to go to a Catholic church, but something is better than nothing I guess. Anyway, we figure if I don’t like it then we can church hop each week. So here goes…

dan says he’s taking to me to his church on sundays. im excited, i miss it. i haven’t been there in about a year.