I hated the huge push for quick marriages, and it is actually one of the reasons I didn’t marry. Then, too… well, “God will give you someone if you’re right with him and you ask hard enough” is all fine and good. And then someone comes and he’s abusive or a stalker or just downright disgusting, and they say that this is the will of God, because God is giving you what you want. Uh, no. THAT is NOT what I want, and abuse is NEVER the will of God.
And then… then you pray and you get a husband or a child or whatever and it isn’t good – the man is abusive, the spouse meets an untimely death, the child is chronically ill, you lose the dream job and go bankrupt, or whatever…. and then the same people say you asked amiss or you did something wrong. Or you think you must have because you heard for so long that you’d have this or that if you did more, prayed perfectly, etc. No. Those things aren’t God’s punishment or our faults, either. It’s easy to cycle into a performance trap with stuff like this, and a downward spiral of self-blame.
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Author: Through Grace
I was raised in a somewhat unhealthy church group within the Nondenominational Christian Church. After graduating high school, I began attending a United Pentecostal Church (UPC). I've been a member of four UPC churches and visited many others. Of the four of which I was a member, I was "encouraged" not to leave the first and then later sent to the second; attended the second where an usher repeatedly attempted to touch me and the pastor told me I should not care about the standards of the organization and was wrong to do so; ran to a third at that point, which threw me out after a couple years; and walked out of a fourth. For these transfers and because I refused to gossip about my former churches, some called me a "wandering star, a cloud without water" (Jude 1:12).
I love the fact that when the blind man was healed, questioned by the Pharisees and temple rulers, and expelled from the temple, Jesus went and sought him out. He very rarely did this once someone was healed, but for this man, he did. I believe God has a special place in his heart for those who are abused, wrongfully accused, or condemned by religious leadership. I believe He loves those who are wronged by churchianity--yes, churchianity, not Christianity, because those who do these wrongs follow a church, not Christ.
1 John 4:7-8
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
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