7/6 Jackson’s Story about Christian Foundations
We have added a story to help you see how having a slave mind set can influence our walk with the Lord. We present Jackson’s story!
In coming to Jesus, my life was totally turned upside down! No more would I visit my favourite pubs or bars. Close so-called friends dropped away in my new found celibacy. My language even cleaned up so I had to learn new words to replace the X-rated ones I used to use.
If you had met me in my early days as a Christian, you would have joined with everyone’s admiration. “He’s got that fire in his belly!” or “…… He certainty loves the Lord.” These were the usual comments made by people in this small Pentecostal church on the corner street in Morris, Indiana. That ‘ building on the corner with the big trees’ became my new home. I was there whenever the doors were open.
Of course my job began to suffer but then I was living a new life! Those around me encouraged me to “… sink myself in Jesus”! A few of us gathered together as a group of people who felt like I did: “…. the people around us were last generation christians. We need to take on the world for Jesus!”
“The harvest is ready! What is stopping us?” We met the street kids, the broken and the deserted, and a rich harvest of people came to know Jesus. My small church grew with God’s blessing and ‘revival’ had come!
Just what broke the unity with their parent church was always uncertain. Perhaps it had to do with our new leader, Christine. and her drive for souls or with our new insights and special revelations as to how to reach the lost – or the church’s inability to integrate the new converts.
Sad to say, the new converts were often shunned and avoided. They were new to Jesus…. and the traditions of the church. They looked different with their tattoos and dread knots. They dressed and smelled different too.
Anyhow, a group of about 20 of us left and moved into a deserted ranch owned by one of the elders. It was here that Christine set up her base and brought the broken people into “community”.
Soon a set of strict rules was developed, mainly aimed at controlling the “perversion of sex”, tithing and using our money and “keeping holy”. Christine, single herself, sought the Lord for His “Whole Truth”, demanding her leaders join her in fasting, night-long prayer vigils and street campaigns.
Since most of her converts came from dysfunctional families, judgmental views began to creep in. Special rituals were set up for the ‘initiates’. The secrets to her ‘anointing’ could be not be taught to the entire group “… if only you did …”.
As I watched, I could see Christine breeze into the Ranch and then go out street witnessing with us. We’d worked ourselves into a ‘hyper-buzz’ and door knocked the area – all without success. She’d come in, knock on five doors and find the ones ready to commit suicide or murder and lead them to the Lord. God’s anointing on her life was awesome!
It is hard to say when the whole group began to fall apart. Perhaps it was when she brought in a new worship leader, “….. saved off the streets in a miraculous way”. He became her ‘exclusive prayer partner’. Divisions became more evident within the group. Her leaders were driven frantic, trying to match her ‘requests’ on how to reach perfection. Some of us were just struggling to survive and trying to “… stop the broken from being smashed even more”.
I lasted the distance as four years later, the group was exhausted. Amazingly, new converts were still found, but the care for the dysfunctional converts was breaking down. The elders in her original church begged her to stop the whole “crazy roller coaster ride“. Eventually, one of the leaders went to the police, charged Christine with assault and the truth began to unfold.
Her leadership team were all into “exclusive sexual freedoms”. Strange relationships between females in the group were flourishing. Males were locked out in isolation until they could prove themselves as ‘worthy’. Three cases of attempted suicide had been covered up.
In addition, several people needed long term counselling and psychiatric care. Her response was to deny the perversions, claiming her “special revelations from God” were valid and to declare “….that the others were unworthy of her protection”.
Sad to say, I know she has since moved to another ranch on the West Coast and begun another “community”, leaving behind a very disillusioned group. What started out with the fire of the Holy Spirit had turned into another form of mind control; yet another form of slavery to someone else’s special revelations. We had lost sight of the Word of God as our foundation.
I was staring at the stain glass windows, just sitting back in that little church where it all started. I surrendered tothat gentle breathe of conviction versus trying to please anyone but Jesus. I would be His slave no one else’s. As I look back now, my deep desire to follow this new life was side-tracked and detailed. I had exchanged one path of blindness for another….from the false comforts of the world to behave in order to please and belong.
I’d traded new rules for what I thought was a new lifestyle and stepped into what? Thanks be to my caring Creator who delivered me from such a road of despair and disillusionment. I turned the corner again and found the freshness of the new life again. I determined to become a slave to God not others!
(Names are changed to protect the innocent. This is the usual journey of a cult group. We discussed it in the last series on the Challenges to Christianity, especially ‘So How do Cults usually stray from Christian Foundations?’
Anyone out there identify with Jackson? Want to share your story? Give me an email and I put it on as a guest post.
Susanne Fengler, Blog Author
www.christianfoundations.jesus-treeoflife.info
Tags: Jackson's Story
Filed under: From Slave to Sonship
Leave a Reply