Maturity

Its been a good week. I am sitting here waiting for hubby to get home from a men's retreat he went to this weekend. Oh how I miss him. This is only the second time in 4 years of marriage that we have been apart overnight. I checked Mary Poppins the movie out from the library last night and after dinner out with a friend the children and I watched part of it. We were up late watching it and the children took a 3 hour nap today. We were up around 8:30 to go have breakfast with a couple of other ladies from church whose husbands were at the retreat.
An interesting remark was made by a woman I know today. She mentioned that since the preacher has been preaching about men being the head of the family that her husband who has not taken a leader role in the past all of a sudden wants to exert control. She is not comfortable with this and resents the way he is trying to "yank" the control from her. I can see where she is coming from. Submission is not easy and it was such a casual conversation and the subject was changed quickly afterwards so I did not get to give my submission lecture. (Drat!) :O) I was thinking about loaning her my copy of Power of A Praying Wife by Stormie O Martin. This book helped me a lot to stop trying to change my husband and ask the Lord instead to work on me.
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I have been in 6 churches in my life. In everyone of them I have gone through rough times with the congregation. Although I dont remember much about the first two I remember greatly the third one. I was in fifth grade when the Pastor left. My family soon followed along with many other families. I went to the next church til I was a Senior in highschool. Then my whole world fell apart when the Preacher at that church informed his wife he did not love her anymore and walked out on her and thier young son. I was devestated as I was best friends with his neice and was a part of this family. I started going to another church and was accused of leaving for all sorts of reasons by "friends" from the other church. It was not pretty and I determined at this new church I was going to sit in my little pew every Sunday with my best friend and a few other friends and not get involved in the church or with the people. HAHA! Little did I know if you arent going to serve the Lord He is not going to bless you! Lesson learned. I became involved in that church and once again formed a relationship with the Preacher and his family .There were some problems at this church but we survived, lost some members but hey the church kept churning out the Gospel and the Preacher stood strong. I left that church about a year or so after we got married. Dh and I wanted a church that was ours and plus we wanted one a little closer to our new house. I still love and respect that Preacher and his wife. At my church now we do things a little different. We have a praise band and powerpoint and something called LIFE groups. Our LIFE groups are based on Acts 2:46 and 47 And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. We have three groups that meet during the week together and go over the Preacher's sermon from the week before. We fellowship together and take care of each other. We are forming lasting bonds with these people and also using this as opportunity to bring our lost neighbors in since we rotate houses. I love this.
Why do people have such thin skin? My feelings have been hurt numerous times, sometimes by the same person but I chose to go on with my life. I wish we in the body would realize that it is up to us to show maturity. We cant always count on it from the other guy (or gal). It would also help to remember that we wont be held accountable for the what they say to us or how they behave towards us but we will be held accountable for how we act and what we say.
I have sat broken hearted as the preachers that I know and love were torn down by people, I have closed my eyes and prayed for everything to be over in business meetings where people (supposed brothers and sisters in Christ) called each other out to the parking lot. I still tense when I hear the words business meeting. Do you believe I actually went to a church one time that argued over whether to have a program to help some homeless families??? How sick is it that these people were ready to leave the church and string the Pastor up because he supported this program? Im happy to say though through all these trials and tribulations I have grown so much in my walk with God. I am finally at a point in my life where I realize that the Pastor is chosen by God and that I have no authority over him. I also realize that in a church there are sometimes people there planted by Satan to undermine the Holy Spirit. Spiritual warfare has become a real thing to me.
I guess in this sense God has worked all things together for the good because I would still be immature in this area had I not had my heart broken so many times.