About (Part 6)

The following Sunday I went to church with my family which was the Lutheran church I had attended since my teen years and in which we were married in. In the Lutheran church there is a certain pattern to the service called the Liturgy. Depending on the church seasons, you turn to a certain page in the Lutheran Hymnal and follow the pastor and congregation in reciting certain passages of the scriptures in a singing manner. There is also usually a gospel reading, an epistle reading, a sermon, hymns and lastly a benediction. Now, for the first time, I really was listening to the liturgy with my new spiritual ears. Psalm 51:10-12 was being read/sung as part of the liturgy as it had been on a majority of services going back as far as I can recall. This time, however, it spoke to my heart and I could barely recite the words. This is what had actually happened to me! God had created a "new heart" within me. A new heart with a new spirit...His Spirit, the Holy Spirit. As best as I can recall, I am not sure what the occasion was, but I met with the pastor shortly after this "heart opening" Sunday service and expressed to him that I felt like more emphasis should be placed on the true power of the gospel and how each member of the church should be shown what it meant that Jesus had come as a man and crucified and rose again to save each individual and that it was a personal thing and not a church thing. I told him how the Old Testament prophecies had Jesus all throughout them but how I felt most people did not truly understand the impact of that. Sadly, my words were met by a blank stare that I can only interpret as a lack of understanding of the new birth of which I was trying to put into words. Now here is how the Lord will direct your paths... the following Sunday as I looked around at the congregants, I wondered how many of the Lutherans attending truly were saved, not because they were members of this church or because they were baptized as infants, or because they had their Confirmation in their teens, or because they partook in Communion every month or attended church every Sunday or were involved with charitable activities or even because they simply had the head knowledge that Jesus had died on the cross for the sins of the world...but simply because they personally had accepted Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior having asked God to forgive their sins and accepting Jesus as Lord not as a denomination, congregation or by benediction, but in the only way one can be saved... personally, one on one. Just as I was thinking on these things, I opened my folded bulletin and found inside a light green colored pamphlet. Yes, I even remember the color. It was titled: "but when you get asked...Have You Been Born Again?" It was a Lutheran treatise on what baptism according to Lutheran doctrine was and why a Lutheran should not be concerned or offended when confronted by born again Christians posing that question. I really took this pamphlet as my "pink slip" for leaving the Lutheran church. So now, how was the Lord to direct my next steps and to what church was I to attend? (to be continued...)