If dear hubby (dh) and I have learned anything in the past year, it's that avoiding or ignoring God's call only works so long. Eventually, He will find a way to make it blatantly obvious that it's His way or no way. I'm good with His way, but sometimes the human instinct to want to have complete control over my life is difficult to let go.
One of the resolutions we've made as a couple this year is to find a new church home. Specifically, we want to find the church home that God is calling us to. When we got married, we just started going to Faith because it was where I was going. It's the church we got married in, and it's just up the street from our house. Literally. Which is good for someone like me who can't seem to get anywhere on time, much less early. As we got more comfortable, we began to take on some leadership roles within the church.
Over the past year, we've noticed some changes in ourselves. I like to lay the blame on our families, but that wouldn't be fair. We've just finally begun to realize some of our beliefs are maturing, and we're beginning to rely on God more. That lead us to inspect why we were at Faith, and what we realized is that even though it may have been the right place for us at one time, it wasn't any longer. We had both been feeling a call from God that we should search for another church, but we didn't want to listen. We have friends there, and it's been our church home for four years. I had even thought that maybe it was Satan just trying to pull us out of church, to keep us from developing into the soldiers from Christ he knew we would become.
Instead, after discussion with family and prayer, we decided to leave our first church home as a married couple. It wasn't easy. We had never left a church before without moving to another town. DH grew up in the same Baptist church since he was five. Since my family moved around, I attended a few different churches, but my parents had been in the same Methodist church since I was eleven. In fact, the two church buildings are now across the road from each other. DH and I had left those churches, but only because we moved away. It was weird to leave the place we called a church home, but it was exciting, because it hadn't really felt like a church home for a while. DH wasn't sure it had ever felt completely like a church home to him.
We were ready to start our new search. Or at least we thought we were. Instead, we actually took two months off from church. If we were at our parents' houses we'd go, but if we were at our house, we normally slept in. It wasn't the best situation, and we knew it. So, we made a resolution to go to church this year. We've been both Sundays. Perfect attendance, so far. And we really like the church we picked to visit first. It seems like a good fit for us. We've been to the contemporary service both Sundays, and we like the friendliness and set up. They also have a more traditional service that we want to check out, so we're going to try that too. All the while, we're asking God for His guidance in our visits.
We're going to check out a few more places, just to make sure we're keeping an open mind and heart about it. We don't want to fall into the same routine of going somewhere just because it's easy. We want to find out church home. We want to go where God wants us to serve.
Have you found your home?
