The Search For Spiritual Family - Part 1

I will warn you now, my next couple of posts are going to be long. I consider my spiritual journey "on the mend" and as I have these six weeks of paternity leave God is calling me to go back to what he has done in my life and record these events as a part of my healing process.

I grew up in a very large church, and because of my age and lack of understanding I never knew the church to be any thing other than a place my family went to on Sunday mornings. I got to see my Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle and Aunt but other than immediate family there were no close relationships there.

Later on I got involved with the youth group, the friendships I made there were very surface and often times I would end up bringing my own friends with me to youth group so that I had somebody to hand around with.

I decided to leave the church when I was old enough to make those decisions and never looked back. There was no relationships to keep me there, I doubt anybody noticed I left.

Later on I saw my need for God in my life and I started searching for him. At the time I was going through a 10-step group and I knew who my higher power was, but I knew there was more.

My last semester in High School I moved out on my own in a basement suite of a Christian couple's home. The were very nice people and in telling them of my spiritual journey they invited me to their church. I was very hesitant at first and refused but one week later decided to join them. Ironically it was a baptism Sunday at the church. The testimonies quickly moved me to tears and I knew this was what I was looking for. After the service I approached the pastor and told him I wanted to be baptized, the next week I was.

So I started attending, Sarah started to come with me soon after that.

We had struggled with premarital sex previous to my baptism, and though we tried to abstain after my baptism, it continued. And now we had guilt. We talked to the pastor and asked for help. His counsel was blunt, if you love each other and want to be with each other and can't stop having sex, get married!

Shortly there after we found out Sarah was pregnant and I proposed. We got married in that church, there we many people that helped in our wedding that attended the church who didn't know us, but loved us none the less. Three months later Caleb was born with all of his difficulties and the church was there for us again, both financially and spiritually. There were a number of couples that took us under their wings and discipled us (even though at the time we did not know of discipleship).

Through all of this there were many changes happening in the church, the worship started to get more intense, people started raising their hands and we experienced for the first time the Holy Spirit. It was and amazing time and we were blown away. But under the surface there were some people who saw these changes as very threatening, and most of all ungodly. There was a spiritual battle happening right under our noses. Many of the battles happened between our pastor and the church board.

The people that were resisting the move of the spirit in our church were not evil people, they did not know any better and were scared of the unknown. At the time we did not have relationship with many of these people and could not understand their actions, but we do now.

Everything came to a head at the ladies retreat.