On Tuesday someone dropping off a patient walked into my job and saw me reading the Bible. I’d never met them before but he asked what I knew about it.

“I know Him.”

“oh yeah? What church do you belong to? Who’s your covering?”

“I don’t go to a church, but I’m a believer. Jesus is my covering.”

He explained that it wasn’t enough. I needed to be involved in a church for God to use me. I had gifts I couldn’t use because I was not part of a body and wasn’t applying the word to my life. I needed to be under the authority of a pastor and wouldn’t understand the Bible without it.

I was blown away. This guy didn’t know anything about my life or what God was doing in it.

He hasn’t seen all that God has done while I sat at the front desk of this “little job” and all the people he has used to refine me and teach me. I never read a physical bible (usually on my phone) at work, and in the 10 minutes I had it open, I met this guy, and several others came to me asking about it. According to this man, God couldn’t use me, and the reality was it was a whirlwind. I joked and wondered what would’ve happened had I sat here for the last six years with a bible open. I thought we were to be led by the spirit and let God be true and every man a liar? I thought when Jesus died, the veil was torn, giving me access to the holy of Holies…? I didn’t know I still had to go through a man who doesn’t know what the word of God actually says.

I already knew what he was about to tell me, and that was he is a pastor.
I didn’t mention Ezekiel 13-14, 33-34; John 10; Jeremiah 23; Acts 17; or the fact that Jesus says to not call anyone father, rabbi, or teacher for there is only one in Heaven. Everyone runs to the scripture, ‘not forsaking the gathering of the saints’. But, nobody knows or asks who God provided to fellowship with every day instead of Sunday, the day Constantine changed the Sabbath (7th day of the week) to Sunday (the first day of the week) to glorify the sun gods as he was a sun god worshipper.
I honestly had nothing to say to him, but God always sends what we need when we need it. It’s when you’re questioning where you stand … what you’re doing or not doing that He shows up and reminds you just who you are.

We are always to test the spirits against God’s word. We are to study and show ourselves approved. There is a difference between having a pastor or teacher’s gift and someone using those things to have a title or try to be somebody. The only thing a pastor should be doing is leading you to Jesus. Nobody should ever take on the role of an authority figure over you because we are called brothers and sisters. There is no respect of persons with God. An elder is someone who has had a longer walk with Jesus and has experience gaining wisdom and discernment. They are not to Lord over your life for their gain. The called are not looking for your money or to guilt you into sowing monetary seeds. We are to give with a cheerful heart and not because a church teaches tithing wrong to run their business.

The next morning I read this devotional from Oswald Chambers:
https://utmost.org
September 23 

The Missionary’s Goal

By Oswald Chambers

He…said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem…” —Luke 18:31

In our natural life our ambitions change as we grow, but in the Christian life the goal is given at the very beginning, and the beginning and the end are exactly the same, namely, our Lord Himself. We start with Christ and we end with Him— “…till we all come…to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ…” (Ephesians 4:13), not simply to our own idea of what the Christian life should be. The goal of the missionary is to do God’s will, not to be useful or to win the lost. A missionary is useful and he doeswin the lost, but that is not his goal. His goal is to do the will of his Lord.

In our Lord’s life, Jerusalem was the place where He reached the culmination of His Father’s will upon the cross, and unless we go there with Jesus we will have no friendship or fellowship with Him. Nothing ever diverted our Lord on His way to Jerusalem. He never hurried through certain villages where He was persecuted, or lingered in others where He was blessed. Neither gratitude nor ingratitude turned our Lord even the slightest degree away from His purpose to go “up to Jerusalem.”

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master” (Matthew 10:24). In other words, the same things that happened to our Lord will happen to us on our way to our “Jerusalem.” There will be works of God exhibited through us, people will get blessed, and one or two will show gratitude while the rest will show total ingratitude, but nothing must divert us from going “up to [our] Jerusalem.”

“…there they crucified Him…” (Luke 23:33). That is what happened when our Lord reached Jerusalem, and that event is the doorway to our salvation. The saints, however, do not end in crucifixion; by the Lord’s grace they end in glory. In the meantime our watchword should be summed up by each of us saying, “I too go ‘up to Jerusalem.’ ”

in the words of my BFF I miraculously met at this job, “keep doing what you’re doing.”

I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing.

How will you find them? What if they’re looking for you?

5 Year Anniversary – I have learned in whatever state I am in to be content.

‘As iron sharpens iron…’ When God suddenly brings a former friend back into your life

The Dr. said <1%… but, God…

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