Take care, Nate.

I disagree with Nate. You seem to be a god loving and obedient servant and if God tells you to leave Babylon, then that is what you must do. If he wants you to wander in the desert or the wilderness and live on your daily manna so that you may learn to depend wholly on him, and hear his voice, then that is what you must do. You cannot live on a borrowed revelation.

There are lots of people like you who have been led out of the Church system. Some for a time, and some forever. You will find fellowship, but you are absolutely right in seeing that creating your own church will only create the kinds of situations you had before. God is creating for himself a people with his laws written on the fleshly tables of their hearts. I firmly believe that THESE people are the CHURCH. The called out ones. And there is no leader but God.

Google a writer named Ray Prinzing - he passed away several years ago, but I found great comfort in his writing, and it is quite clear this man was spreading the word of god and not into kingdom building.

I have been finding lots of people online who have some of the same experience as you.

Here are a couple of blogs I’ve been enjoying:

http://jonfeatherstone.wordpress.com/
http://uchurch.wordpress.com/

god bless you!

As a side note to consider I want to make something known. Christ has worked in the IC for 2000 years. There were ups and downs. There were splits and joining together. The Holy Spirit was not dormant. He works just as much today as he did back then in the first century. We are what the early reformers called semper reformanda. We are always reforming. I have seen through history that our journey in knowing of God is very progressive and not static. I can’t say enough to people I know that they should study church history. There is a treasure chest full of gems if you are willing to examine it. You should look up “Protestant Reformers” on Wikipedia and find out who were the key people that gave us religious freedom. Why you are more of a protestant and not a Roman Catholic and such. You must understand that many people died for our rights to believe the way we do today. We must thank God we are not under the oppression of Rome. We didn’t just magically wake up one day and find ourselves in the position we are in. People like John Hus, John Wycliffe and Martin Luther went through persecution and even death to bring us the freedom we enjoy today.

Carry on,
Nate

Those are some good thoughts, but you must understand that what we call the church today is very much a ‘Western’ cultural idea. To think that is what God wants from us, His Children (Church), is a ploy of the enemy. That enemy has blinded us all for many years to think that what we do on Sunday is what Church is all about. I agree that God is not absent from the IC, but I do not believe that is what He wants or has wanted for us all these years!

Here are some very challenging books to read:
http://www.ptmin.org/books.htm
(start from the bottom and work up)

You are not alone. For us “church” or “being the church” is a way of living rather than a specific location or group of people. While involved in the IC my radar for being the church outside of service times, program involvement, prayer meetings and visitation was OFF. I never considered praying, fellowshiping, learning about God, sharing a meal or encouraging one another OUTSIDE of the structure of the IC “as church” because it wasn’t associated with the IC. I know that sounds really stupid but I remember disregarding opportunities to get to know neighbors, co-workers and others who crossed my path in life because they weren’t interested in going to church or because they were involved with another church…go figure.

Since leaving the IC my ‘being the church’ radar is always ON. It’s crazy how regular everyday living is saturated with opportunities to be the church with the folks who cross your paths in your normal course of living. One of my customers described our way of living as “Doing church all the time, everywhere with everybody” and I think that sums it up well.

Thanks for sharing your story.

Rick

I appreciate your way with words. I totally relate to what you just said here, for I was the same.

by A. W. Tozer

The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone.

The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man [or woman] who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens.

He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.”

is so good I thought I should include it for those interested.

http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/tozer/5j00.0010/5j00.0010.39.htm