Delayed reactions, part 9

I found some more stuff to puke out. Thanks in advance for reading. I'll try not to splatter.

1) The spiritually abusive environment that I was involved in for many years kept telling me that I wasn't supposed to be surprised when God would answer my prayers. Perhaps this is one reason why I have so many issues with prayer today and why I often have trouble enjoying intercession. They also told me I wasn't supposed to love God because He was good to me; they said I was supposed to love Him because He was God, period. They belittled the concept of what they called "911 prayers." Hey, spiritual hotshots, have y'all ever read the Psalms? Psalm 136 says to give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever, and then it lists ways that He was good to Israel; I don't think it says, "We love You because we're supposed to." Hey, spiritual robots, Psalm 50 says to call on God in the day of trouble, i.e., as if you were dialing 911, and that will glorify Him. Hey, spiritual prudes, have you ever noticed that Psalms is the longest book of the Bible? It's 150 separate expressions, some long and some short, of emotions. Some of these artistic expressions are prayers. Others are verbal pukings. And still others are expressions of people (mostly David, I think) who were so thankful that God answered their prayers, so surprised at how powerfully He swooped down from heaven and rescued them, so enamored and in awe with His ways that God liked their expressions, inspired their expressions, and canonized them so we could use them to slice through spiritual forces while we do battle and snuggle up to God when we're looking for a shoulder to cry on. That last sentence I typed is about 5 lines long, but I don't care. When you're in love, you become crazy-expressive, and the psalms were written by people who were crazy-in-love with God, and perhaps one reason why your hands would shake involuntarily when you would counsel me or why you developed a stress-related heart condition a few years after establishing your church might have something to do with the fact that you've never allowed yourself to express your emotions properly to God. Perhaps you should review what the greatest commandment is: to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Perhaps God knew this was a healthy way of living the life He gave you, in addition to receiving the incessantly surprised, unending awestruck love gifts from His children, from His bride, from His creation who makes His heart beat faster with just one glimpse from their eyes. Just a thought.

2) I noticed recently that my legs comprise about half the length of my body. There isn't anything in the human legs except bones and muscles, etc. (I think there are also joints and tendons and ligaments, but I'm an artist, not a scientist.) My legs don't have a heart or a liver or intestines or a brain. All they have are materials that are necessary for moving my body from one place to another. I don't think it's an accident that God designed the human body this way. I think moving is important to Him. There are 2 spiritually abusive environments that come to mind that I should have used my legs to escape from much sooner than I did.

One church that I was involved in offered a Sunday School class that was taught by a married couple, mostly the wife. They were mostly nice, and I felt welcome there, but I should have seen the red flags much sooner than I did. After being involved there for about a year, I was praying and trying to figure out what was going on, and I was unhappy and aching inside. God showed me that I was a sheep without a shepherd. (Technically, Jesus is my Shepherd, as the shepherd/songwriter of Psalm 23 so eloquently points out, but He was just helping me express what I was feeling.) These nice Sunday School teachers were teaching me material every week, and sometimes they would hug me and tell me that they loved me, but they were neglecting me. They did almost nothing to get to know me. Should I have been surprised? After inviting us to their house to eat lunch, the wife would proudly announce that she would never clean house (which explained the layers of dust on the furniture). After talking to us about how they were trusting God with their finances, the husband would bootleg copies of sermons and hand them out to us; one time, He gave each of us a copied copy of a music CD, and He gave me a copy even after I told him I didn't want it (and I recently threw it away). So, you're too busy to clean house for whatever reason, and you have the nerve to invite dozens of people to your dustpile? So, you're stealing sermons and music, and you have the nerve to ask God to bless your finances? I should have used the legs that God gave me to move out of there so much more quickly. But then again, would you have let me go? After I stopped attending your class, you spotted me in the church cafeteria and announced to everybody, "HEY, TIRZAH! I THOUGHT YOU STOPPED COMING TO CHURCH!"

And that's another thing. The pastor of this particular church was a nice guy, but in retrospect, he may have had his head stuck up his butt. Perhaps he could have used some accountability. I'm sorry, but telling one of the worship leaders to button his jacket in front of everybody, during the invitation at the end of the service, wasn't appropriate, even if you were his "father in the Lord." I don't think it was a coincidence that that worship leader and his wife stopped attending your church shortly afterwards.

So, this pastor had an awesome testimony of how God healed him physically. He used this testimony incessantly in his sermons. Then after I finally left his church and was flipping TV channels just out of curiosity and saw his TV show, I saw this pastor STILL talking about his testimony, and he said that he was tired of talking about it. Hmm. I wonder why? I was tired of hearing about it, but instead of being bored with God's miraculous power, and instead of being tired of telling the same testimony over and over and over again, why not seek Him for something new? God isn't boring; He's exciting, and He restores you and gives you strength, like it says in Psalm 103. It's OK to bring a little spice to a relationship. If your relationship with God bores you, and you're supposed to shepherd people into having a relationship with God, they'll probably get bored, too. It's OK. Just seek Him for something new. He likes that. I think it's one of His specialties. Wait. Does He have any non-specialties? Hmm.

3) Is it any wonder why a spiritually abused pastor's daughter stayed at this church for as long as she did? Did she not know that it was possible for her spiritual covering to be wrong, sometimes severely wrong, from time to time? Did her parents not understand that just because God commanded children to honor their parents and obey their parents, that did NOT mean that He gave them free reign? that they did not have a blank check for unlimited power to use however the heck they wanted, especially without accountability? This daughter should have used her legs to run away as soon as her father/pastor used his pulpit to preach a sermon series to reinforce the unbiblical stuff he had been puking on his daughter at home. I'm curious if any of the members of the congregation noticed that he was looking right at his daughter while he was preaching much of this series and that it was more than likely being preached because she wasn't honoring or obeying. She was bringing shame and disgrace.

What's worse: disobeying your parents, or obeying your parents when they tell you to not do anything when an usher is committing adultery with you inside the church building?

Hmm. Perhaps I splattered after all, but I'm glad to report that my legs are in good working order now.

I wasn't planning on blogging on September 11th, so this is completely off topic, but I pray that everyone who lost someone precious on September 11, 2001, would enjoy sweet comfort from the God of all comfort today. God bless America!