My Spiritual Pilgrimage
My spiritual pilgrimage (I love calling it that) is personal but it’s also communal. I’ll explain. I grew up in the Lutheran church faithfully attending services every Sunday with my parents. It was a very traditional, very liturgical upbringing. Though I could recite things with the congregation like the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles Creed, I had no means of understanding the words I was saying. They were inaccessible ideas and “church” was just a building that I went to on Sunday because my parents made me. It was because I did not understand the role of the church that I had such a hard time meeting Jesus. I guess owing to the fiercely individualistic American ethic (and my own sin nature) that had crept into my understanding of Christianity, I thought Jesus was someone you encountered when you were alone and if you needed someone else to help you in your faith, you were doing it wrong. I tried to meet Jesus on my own terms according to a construct that did not exist anywhere in the Bible. It wasn’t until God led me to Spotswood Baptist Church that I began to understand that God made the church to be a means through which the gospel is lived out. Prior to Spotswood, I had belonged to a number of para-churches that gave me a taste of the community God designed for us to find in the church. Living in community is an almost inexpressibly beautiful thing. The church is the bride of Christ and we are to love her as we love ourselves—not love merely the trappings of church—i.e. worship music, great sermons, a compelling bible study—but to love our brothers and sisters in Christ and to experience love and forgiveness. Though I can’t name the day when I was justified before God through the blood of Christ Jesus, I know that I am his daughter because I love the brethren and long to bring others into the church to experience the same beautiful sanctifying saving love that is God ushering His Kingdom into earth—your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. The church gives rote words meaning, scripture application, and puts Jesus on display for a world that is hungry for Him.
