My Story

Here is where we have met for the last 4 years.

The chapel @ Rapha.

We come together every Saturday night and wait for God.

I have tried to make the meeting into several different venues.

I have tried to make it a church.

I thought that was what God wanted. Silly me.

It wasn't.

You can't take something and make it what it never was intended to be.

That is my "religious" part that causes me to work in this manner.

On May 20, 2001, I had a conversation with God.

I had been hosting a Saturday night recovery meeting for almost 2 years at the point.

The conversation went something like this:

"What now God?"'

"Grow a church!"

"I can't build a church. I don't know how."

"I didn't say build, I said grow."

"I don't get it."

"I said in Scripture that I (God) would build my church. I even said that unless I (God) build it, you will labor in vain."

"I will build it...you will grow from it."

"Does that mean that I have been running around doing a bunch of stuff that I thought mattered and that somehow it would all come together?  And that because of my efforts, you would recognize it and call it church?"

"Pretty  much. I appreciate all you do, even when you do it and don't consult me for instruction."

"I can't bless when you act outside of what I desire to build."

"I guess growing is a different animal than building, isn't it?"

"Now you seeing things my way."

"Don't be concerned so much with the structure as with the life I want to bring to the church."

This is where I have missed it over the years.

I was more concerned with what it looked like.

I measured what God was doing by what was visibly happening when we met.

Bad move on my part.

This past week, God has stirred Barry, Vicki and me with a new vision and insight into what He wants to accomplish here at Rapha on Saturday night.

I have, in the past, been trying to take the precepts and thoughts behind A.A. and fit them into a mold that would look like a church.

God is not instructing us on how to take the church and fit it into the mold of A.A.

This has been an incredible week of being reset and being taught.

God has been speaking through His Scripture to me about His heart for the lost.
His (God) desire is to give me His heart, His burden and His plan for those in addiction.
Because of the nature of the problem that is addiction, the approach will be different than what a

traditional, main line church may use.

Pray for us as we embark on this change.

I know this.

If what I have heard is God, it will work and prosper and men and women will be brought into the Kingdom of God.

If what I have heard isn't God.....

It will wither and die and we all will know that we heard wrongly.

God on you.....

mb