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My Search is OverMother and Dad believed strongly in our family of six attending church meetings in my childhood denomination “whenever the doors opened,” in Sunday services both morning and evening, Wednesday prayer meetings, revivals, etc. As a result of so much exposure to Christians and Bible teaching, I received the Lord when I was eight. Though I knew something happened within me at that moment, I didn't understand what it was. In the years that followed, that something served as the catalyst for me to follow God in the best way I knew how. I even attended a denominational university where I graduated at 21, feeling “worn out” with what I thought was God and His ways. I decided I no longer needed God or anything to do with Him and took a 15-year hiatus from all things relating to what I had known about Him. I might have been through with Him, but He wasn't through with me. In that 15-year time period, I searched for Him in whatever the world was offering: counseling sessions, sensitivity training, meditation, and astrology, to name a few of my wanderings. After many years of personal frustration that led to multiple heartaches, He captured me once more. I spent the next 18 years searching for Him in Bible churches, charismatic churches, Christian books, seminars, conferences, etc. I read the Bible through several times trying to understand it. This exercise often resulted in more frustration because I couldn't put the different parts of the Scriptures into a meaningful whole. In reflecting upon these years of my search, I know that I was searching for the meaning to my existence. Wasn't I born, and then born again, for more than just “going to heaven?” If that was my reason for being here, why did God put me here at all? Then as recently as three years ago, my husband met a Christian brother in the local church through an odd set of circumstances. Jim took a woodworking course and this particular brother was teaching it. Jim couldn't help notice an indefinable essence about this man and over the course of the workshop, they had lunch together and developed the beginning of a relationship. During the next year, this brother met with Jim many times. This brother always brought others with him. In these meetings, Jim began to see things about the Lord and His purpose that he never before had seen. Jim read Miller's Church History at the encouragement of this brother, and he began to see how the church started to degrade almost from its inception in Acts. Jim's excitement about what he saw affected me as well. At the same time he was reading about church history, I was studying many of Watchman Nee's works, specifically The Normal Christian Life. I began to find answers to questions I had asked for years. Over the next several months we began to meet in small groups with several others in the local church. In December 1996, we attended our first Lord's Day meeting and were attracted to the Christ shining in the believers. We also were astonished at how alive the meeting was and how well the meeting functioned without a preacher. The brothers and sisters carried the meeting with their speaking. We knew we had touched something we had never experienced before, and we wanted more. The Lord continued to unveil our eyes, and we began to see the mystery of His purpose. What we saw that first Lord's Day meeting were brothers and sisters who expressed the life and nature of God (2 Peter 1:4). I now know the purpose of why I am here, to express Christ (Ephesians 1:22,23). My search is over. M.S. | Back to List |
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