{"id":86,"date":"2006-12-06T15:08:00","date_gmt":"2006-12-06T15:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianmashburn.net\/?p=86"},"modified":"2006-12-06T15:08:00","modified_gmt":"2006-12-06T15:08:00","slug":"secret-life-feedback-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/?p=86","title":{"rendered":"Secret Life Feedback #9"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More feedback from the blog\/email entitled “Secret Life of Discipleship.” Check out the various generations represented here…<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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I think I’ll piece together two more sets of feedback, ending with an even eleven (smirk). I think I will use the next one to deal with my choice of using the word “Secret”…<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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I’m so grateful to all of your feedback…this whole little cyber-experience has been good for my heart. One friend of mine, after reading it, said he could see how the writing and sending of this is good “catharsis” for me…which is right. It has been. Thanks for going there with me…<\/span><\/span><\/font><\/div>\n
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“Despite being fourth generation church of Christ (3 of my grandparents were born into C of C families over 100 years ago) and attending C of C’s 3 time per week for my entire life I have grown to feel like an outsider. <\/span>On a good day, I do not care that I am a misfit. On those days it is enough for me to be focused on Jesus and seek His glory. On other days, I walk in the flesh and I am wearied of constantly swimming upstream. I get tired of being that strange but harmless guy who is out of step with my brothers. My wife <\/span>and I are strongly considering leaving the churches of Christ to experience aspects of the Christian faith that we have not explored in our fellowship.  We also realize that we will be leaving behind all of the strengths of our movement of which there are many. Please pray that God will speak clearly to us.” — 45ish brother<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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“<\/span>How very encouraging to read all the feedback. I have made the decision to leave the Church of Christ after so many years of questioning and seeing no truth in so many of the answers I got. I knew that there was no truth in the answers as I found no peace in them. My heart aches at how many of us have missed and are missing so much of the life abundant Christ shed His blood to give us. I am ready to receive fully His right to give me all that He purchased for me with His blood. As all of those who have expressed resonance and support for your writings and their lives transform, our Lord is being glorified and held up through their lives so that the world will ask for the reason for their hope, and we they can answer with so much love, assurance, joy, and peace. It is my prayer that my Father will continue to heal all the pain I have experienced attempting to find peace in all the wrong places, and that He will return me to the Church of Christ fully healed and alive so that I might serve Him fully for the life I have left. So many thoughts in this “Secret Life” express so much of all I have needed to become free with the “peace and <\/strong>freedom that passes understanding.”” — 60ish sister, life-long member of the Church of Christ<\/span><\/font><\/font><\/div>\n
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<\/span><\/font><\/span>“I grew up in the CoC and was fully indoctrinated into the legalistic mindset that you describe.  Rather than making me angry or confused, it basically made me callous.  I went through the motions but my spirit was sucked away and I was left with a legalistic shell of a faith.  I did the things I had to do on Sunday and went right back into the world the following morning.  Thanks be to God that I’m slowly turning back into something that might one day be recognizable as a Christian.  Finding like-minded people here in [my town] and now on Blogs like yours have started a slow trickle of the Spirit into a long-since dry well.” – 34 year old brother, life long member of the Church of Christ<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“When you spoke of being mentorless, this is how I have felt and am still feeling but I have decided I no longer want to merely pray just to have God answer them but to have a real and alive relationship with him. And thank you for drawing attention back to Christ where so many times we get distracted by the things pointing us to him.  I loved what you said about giving sacrificially at the risk of being called “bad stewardship”.  I can remember hearing the sermon about “Good Stewardship” so many times growing up.  However I’m afraid that we have been hoarding the gifts from God under the label of being “Good Stewards.”  And more and more I wonder if Jesus himself would have been labeled a Good Steward of money. I really don’t get involved with church programs for many of the reasons you stated.  I really want to but I cannot find a place inside the church walls to have the “life-giving impact” on people. In fact I would say many of the deeply spiritual events in my life happened outside of the church building.  My friends and I started a home Bible Study to bring people in from the area who weren’t really Followers.  As they began to become Christians, we had the problem of getting them involved in local Churches because no church seemed to fit them or were easy to get plugged into.  It seemed as if there were no place for them. I feel the same way about walking on egg shells with what we say.  Sometimes when I speak at places, I think to myself, “If they really knew what I believe would they let me be standing here on this stage?” Thank you.  It makes me happy and encourages me to see that people outside of my generation are seeing these things and wishing for something different.  I debate within myself to  leave and start something different or to stay and work with the people I love and care about for something more in line with Christ.” – 21ish brother, life long member of the Church of Christ<\/span><\/div>\n

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More feedback from the blog\/email entitled “Secret Life of Discipleship.” Check out the various generations represented here…   I think I’ll piece together two more sets of feedback, ending with an even eleven (smirk). I think I will use the next one to deal with my choice of using the word “Secret”…   I’m so grateful to all of your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-1o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}