Before IFB
My very first memory as a child is when I was 7. It was a family meeting my dad had called and drug my mother in the room. We all sat, except for him. He stood in front of us angry and stated, “Your mother and I are getting divorced, because she is a whore”. Both of my parents remarried within a year. My mother married a drug addict and my dad married a bartender at the local bar. I was raised by sister and step-sister. I remember at a earlier age my dad would allow me to taste beer and while I was at my mom I was around so much drugs. The summer I was 13 years old I had smoked marijuana, crank, acid and drank like a fish. At 16 I went to live with my mom. My senior year in high school I came home to our house be raided my the police. This lead to my mom and step dad going to jail. I wanted out of my mom home and moved in with my boyfriend who I had just started dating that month. We met in May, he asked me to marry him in June and we got married in July. What I didn’t know when I married my husband is that is was an alcoholic. Within the next year I got pregnant and we had our first child. Within that year I spent some time with my step-grandma who went to church. She never invited me to church, but I knew she had something different in her life that I didn’t have and I longed for a different lifestyle. I didn’t know what I was running to , but I knew what I was running from. My son and I attending her church. After attending this church for sometime, I recognized one morning the pastor gave an invitation very clearly for salvation and I said to myself, if the pastor says this tonight, I will go forward. That night I got saved! We were very faithful to church, Sunday services and Wednesday’s. We continue to live the same way on the outside for many years, but a lot of things changed within me. We then had 2 more children together. After 7 years of dealing with an alcoholic husband and a dead marriage, I wanted out and left. Within a couple of months my husband had filed for divorce, but also during this time my sister lead my husband to the Lord and he had stopped drinking. Just before our divorce was final I had moved to Kansas City. My sister had been begging me to move there with her and to get back to God.
Intro to IFB
What I will say I am completely ashamed of. I know within this time frame I hurt people, people I will never be able to apologize to. I feel guilt to this day for the harm I did. I have apologized to some and I am thankful to God for allowing that.
This is when I became part of the IFB church. The (my) pastor began to counsel me right away, almost everyday. I never had a man that cared and was willing to invest in me. I ate it up and listened to everything he said and looked up to him as THE MAN that would guide me back to Jesus, back to my husband and back to my children. A week before our divorce was final, he told my husband to move to KC and start counseling with me. My husband wasn’t able to move quickly and with the pressure of his family he wasn’t willing to cancel or postpone the divorce. He did a few week later move to KC and the first counseling sessions we had we were told to get remarried before people knew we were divorced. We submitted for the next few years to everything he said. The pastor was a graduate of Hyles Anderson and had very strict standards as First Baptist. I began wearing dresses, sewed up all the slits up in my skirts so I could sing behind the pulpit, going soul winning, was given a KJV because mine was wrong, started attending Bible College at our church and began doing everything the perfect christian does on the outside. However, I wasn’t reading my Bible and the only time I prayed was when I was praying with someone to lead them to salvation. I was thought how to be perfect on the outside, but not taught how to have a personal relationship with Christ. Our pastor ended up having an affair with one of the single ladies in the church and even admitted to grooming my sister, after her husband left for Afghanistan. Some people privately called out the pastor on somethings and we had a church split. From the pulpit it was told that it was doctrine issue, but then the truth came out. We went from a huge church to only having about 10 families that stayed during this time. We went from a church that held about 2,000 people to rent a small church that held 100. The pastor was asked to leave with his wife and take time to repair is marriage and then we would except him back, however, the pride in him wouldn’t except that and he kept saying, he is blameless. So we found another pastor. Not long after that my husband wanted to move back to the area which we were from, because living in KC was hindering his relationship with his daughter who he had with his previous marriage. Before we moved, I called every church around asking what their standards of their church were. I was not willing to settle for a church that wasn’t KJV, they had to go soul winning, women in dresses…..etc. I had a list. We found a church in Rolla. We attended this church for 11 years. I taught in the christian school, my kids went to school there, I was in charge of our ladies ministries, and the list goes on and on. It is really sickening to me now. But this is where I was at. I was in charge of our hospitality care, as men of god came through to preach at our church. This was huge for me, because I got to sit and feed these men. I would sit and listen as they ate with our pastor and hang on every word they said. The praise that came from them on how great the food was and the hospitality was huge to my pride (although I acted humble). I was definitely a man pleaser instead of a God pleaser. A lot of things were the same as our church in KC and it was a perfect fit for my self righteous spirit. However, there was one thing different about this church. We opened a Reformer Unanimous. Now I know there are some teaching in this ministry that I now don’t agree with, but this ministry gave me something that I will value the rest of my life. It gave me a relationship with Christ. It taught me to have that intimate relationship with Him. It thought me how to go from from a man pleaser to a God pleaser. It taught me I don’t need man to tell me how to live, what to do, I don’t need man to fix me or fix my adversity, because I have the Holy Spirit within me to guide me and I have access to Him 24/7 and He loves me where I am at. I learn so much about who He was. I learned He wasn’t angry. He was full of love and grace. This ministry is what taught be to question things internally in the IFB church. I was a leader in this ministry and loved the people God gave me to minister to. After 11 years, and currently working at as the church secretary, I seen way too much. Too many cover ups that only a few people know about within the church. The men that I looked up to for many years had fell off the pedestal that I had put them on. I was devastated. Man had failed me, disappointed me, disrespected me, hurt me. When I privately confronted the pastor and resigned from every duty, I was threw to the waste side. I tried just being a church member for a about a month, but could not longer sit under the preaching of someone who I had lost all disrespect for. We left.
After IFB
We attended a few churches with the same beliefs as IFB, but this was so discouraging. Same thing everywhere we went and what I needed was healing. So I gave up for a short while and asked God to guide us. I had stopped doing EVERYTHING on the outside that I was taught and I told God, if you want me to go back to doing something I did before, He would have to convict me through the Holy Spirit that was in me. I wore pants, dropped my skirt length when I wore them, dropped my shirt length from neck and sleeves, listened to different music, went to the movies, open friendships with people I would have never been friends with before, and so many other things. I challenge God on a lot of things. I didn’t do this in rebellion, I did it because I desperately wanted to hear from God. I told him if he would tell me no, I would listen. I told him I would be waiting for His still small voice. There were times He did convict me and I turned from those ways. This is not something that I would recommend to anyone else do. I needed to know what HE wanted me to be. I am still listening and learning.
In the last 5 years we have visited many churches (different denominations) and nothing feels like home. Nothing sets right in my spirit. I have had people tell me just pick the best of what you got around you. Well that isn’t me. I know the doctrines that I believe and their isn’t a church that is going to change that, but Holy Spirit has to give me peace and I just couldn’t find that. So for the last couple of years we haven’t attended anywhere. I still love God and still worship Him in the way I feel as God would have me, but that desire is still there to find that church home.
Today
For the last year my daughter has been working for a lady that we know through the IFB church. Her family attended there when we did. This lady and her family had started inviting my daughter to The Ridge. My daughter has been going there for a while and comes to my house afterwards and tells us all about it. For her to be faithful I knew it would have to be something worth checking out. After about 4 months of her asking us to visit we finally decided to go on Easter Sunday. We have now been 4 times and we don’t have the feeling that it isn’t right. We enjoy the peaching and the freedom we feel in our spirits. I don’t know what will come of this but we will see it though and let God guide.
“Be still, and know that I am God…”