My Testimony Pt. 8 Puffed Up With Pride & Spiritually Dried Up

God's grace helped me grow spiritually.

1 Peter 2:2,3  As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby: 3) If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. 

I entered a time as a new Christian that I always think of with great joy. I benefited greatly from a combination of having mature Christian friends to mentor me, and of being in a Bible preaching church during a time when basic truths and essential doctrine were taught.

The Lord put a thirst in my soul for His word and I began to grow. Notice how Peter reminds us that a new believer, often called babes in Christ, need to crave the milk of God's Word. It must be the pure milk, which means scripture truth that is not mixed with anything that pollutes or dilutes it. 

My desire, an intense longing to hear from God as I read His word, became my singular pursuit. At work, during each break I eagerly read my Bible. At home, I had my concordance and Bible out, reading and seeking to learn and grow in my faith.

I tasted how good God is to all who place repentant faith in Jesus Christ for salvation.  For me, this was a joyous time of spiritual growth and a growing zeal for the things of God.

I noticed that our church no longer offered a class for new converts to Christ, so I volunteered to teach it. This was a good time, and I spent many hours preparing lessons on basic truth. 

There is one caveat to this period in my life. I was taught about dispensationalism, and it seemed to make perfect sense to me. Essentially, I was taught to view  the Gospels and Acts as speaking to a Jewish audience, and I was not a Jew, but a Gentile. 

Therefore, the main idea I understood, was that we should follow the Apostle Paul because he was the apostle to the Gentiles.

I became puffed up and prideful.

1 Corinthians 8:1-3  Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. 2)  And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. 3)  But if any man love God, the same is known of him. 

I later taught an adult Sunday school class for many years, and to my great shame, I avoided teaching from the Gospels, Acts, or even Peter, James and John. 

Even though I was a new believer in Christ and was blessed with wonderful spiritual growth, I still had a lot to learn. Like Paul wrote to the Corinthians, knowledge even from learning and growing in our faith, can lead us to become "puffed up." 

To be puffed up means my ego was inflated and my heart filled with pride. The Greek word describes a "blowfish" that inflates itself when an enemy draws near, making it impossible for a predator to easily swallow it. 

My becoming puffed up with knowledge did not happen overnight. I became puffed up over a period of time, and since I had everything figured out by viewing all scripture through a dispensational lens, I wondered why other believers could not grasp this viewpoint.

Thus, all those years I taught an adult Sunday School class, I mostly avoided straying from Paul's writings. In Pauline terms, I failed to declare the whole counsel of God to those dear people (Acts 20:27). If anyone learned anything, it was because God overrode my wrong thinking. 

What about my love for sacred music? Although the hymnal we used (The All American Hymnal) had many songs that were new to me, my soul was blessed by good congregational singing and the church choir. My wife joined choir right away, but it took a few years before I joined. 

We were blessed with some good ministers of music, and our church performed many Cantatas at Christmas. Several of them were written by Ron and Shelly Hamilton, such as "Born To Die" "The Centurion" or "10,000 Hallelujahs."

These were good, Bible based cantatas with very good acting parts blending with choral numbers. 

A slow drift away from Bible standards.

1 Corinthians 1:18-21  For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. 19)  For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. 20)  Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21)  For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. 

I share the following details with no joy, for the church I was saved in, was in a state of flux.

Over a period of time, our once conservative church began to track in a different direction. Leadership decided that it was appropriate to replace the Sunday evening preaching with occasional concerts or dramas. 

Yet the preaching of the gospel is the Divine standard God gave for His churches to follow.

The music no longer was glorifying our Heavenly Father. At one point, it was determined to survey the congregation to find out what type of music they wanted, instead of keeping with the standard from God's word.  Many other things were going on that diminished the standards of God.

In short, over a period of time, the Bible standards were slowly pushed aside, and the cultural norms of dress, music and a casualness toward God were brought in to replace them.

My spiritual growth slowed down greatly, and my inner man became parched, like the dry bones under the desert sun, that Ezekiel saw (Ezekiel 37). 

Prayer time's before services were set aside, and the time for preaching God's Word was reduced. Our church followed a business model that so many are using today. 

Meanwhile, a group of families, left our church in order to begin a new work that followed God's Word.

I was left with a void once the head of these families were no longer in our church, but God's timing was not to lead us away at this time.

In 2003, a tornado struck the place where I was employed, and we were not ready to experience a job loss like that. The company announced that our plant would close. 

I was blessed in that I had earned an Associate degree. My wife and I prayed and believed that I should return to college full time until I graduated. 

My wife's place of employment had abundant overtime in 2004, which allowed me to be in school full time while we were able to pay our bills. 

However, during this time, we both missed a lot of church, which somehow did not seem so bad, given the worldly direction that it had taken. 

Both of us were drying up spiritually, and we were not worshipping the Lord in Spirit and in truth. Our Father in heaven was going to address this issue, as we shall see in my next post. 

The issue of my pride and being puffed up, would come up again when I graduated, but the Lord would also deal with it decisively. The time had arrived for the Lord to lead us in a new direction. 

Bob