Letters From Leavers

Leaving the institution we today refer to as “church” was a process for me. It began seven months after I invited Christ into my heart. That was when I was in a car with 3 others and God’s light came upon us, blotting out every other thing in this world. Although the others experienced this same power and light, I alone was taken to heaven to be shown what I must do. That was 33 years ago. The time for what I was shown is now near at hand.

Like most everyone, I wanted to be liked and I wanted to belong. I continued to attend traditional “church” services for most of the first 20 of those 33 years, believing that fellowship was vital to being a “Christian”. However, the more I meditated and experienced the “glory to glory” transformation God had blessed me to understand as our birthright, a gift given freely and abundantly to those who love God with all their heart, mind and soul, who listen to understand their calling according to God’s purposes, the greater the gulf between what the institutional “church” was teaching and what God was teaching me.

I truly believed that scripture which told me, “the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”  Jesus prayed for us to be one with him, as he was one with the Father, but this “abiding” he talked about, which is central to following Jesus Christ and understanding what it means to be a “Christian”, is not taught in any institutional church. This is the core of the traditional church’s hypocrisy.

When we understand how to abide, we link into “the mind of Christ” and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty”. It is not some wishy washy thing… it flows from obedience to what Jesus taught, an obedience that is willing to leave those who would keep us from the truth; those who would substitute a the written word for the living WORD; those who would substitute an emotional high generated by carefully selected music and slick preaching for the overwhelming peace and joy and power that comes to those who are willing to do whatever it takes to understand how to abide in Christ. In such times of shared joy and power we are in such awe of God that no words of one’s own can be spoken.

During such times of abiding love there are communications that come directly from God, providing insight into needs that have not even been spoken. Once, when 4 of us gathered to form a community, this was a regular occurence. And on one occassion, as we held onto each other to limit the shaking of our bodies, a result of such power we could barely contain, a clear but unspoken command came from God to each of us individually. Each of us went to do what we were told to do. Two of us were told to go to a friends house and at two in the morning we woke him to annouce God had sent us, but we knew not why. As soon as we said this he dropped to his knees and began to weep. He and his wife had the worst fight they had ever had and although he did not consider himself a Christian, he had prayed that evening that God would send someone to help them.

Knowing what I know now, I could never go back to the denominational divisions and inherently carnal structure we now know as “Church” (see I Cor. 3 for Paul’s definition of carnal). Instead, I most be about my Father’s business, which is a calling to build communities of faith where believers are free to believe differently, so long as they love one another. To that end I have at long last found a woman who likewise sees this cause as her mission in life. Seven years before we met I was given a very vivid dream about her and the three things that would clearly identify her. What I could not see, because it was so beyond anything I had experienced in life, was that she would be partially disabled by a viral infection that nearly killed her. For anyone who is interested you can read about the miracles that had to take place to bring us together here.

In Christ,

Leroy Grey