MHR-EP-2614 – The Greatest Tragedy #spiritualbutnotreligious

What is the real mission of your congregation?  IF we are spirits inside a human suit, our problems in relating begin when we focus more on the suit than the spirit inside!!! © Join us as we discuss meeting the true needs of the spirit inside each of us.  #spiritualbutnotreligious #faithinaction #makingheavenreal 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

What would you say is the real mission of your congregation?

SPEAKER_00 0:06

What if I told you that there's more to it? That there are benefits and resources from heaven that are available to help you in this life, and you've never heard about them? Are you curious? Well, join Gordon Merrill as he digs deeper into making heaven real in this life.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Welcome back to Making Heaven Real. Do you know there are no religions and no denominations mentioned in the Bible? Both denominations and religions are man-made. As a result, that's basically the human part of us. If you get back to the two wolf example we've been talking about. That's the major reason we don't discuss denominations or debate them on making heaven real. Remember back in, I think it was episode 2546, where we were talking about people who identify as spiritual but not religious. People who are moving away from brick and mortar churches, moving away from organized religion, seems to be pointing to the spirit side of things of us as needing more. If you remember our first episode at the very beginning where we were talking about the birth of this podcast, it all was born out of a personal need of mine for anybody anywhere to provide me a little support during my grief. In my lifetime I was a part of two major denominations for an extended period of time. When my wife passed, nobody from either one offered any support, any help, or any guidance. Except for one person, and I'll talk about that later. So we're back to what is the focus of your church or your congregation or your group of people that may meet regularly. Listen to the words found in this one song. He was raised in church every Sunday. Memorize John three sixteen. He could sing every verse of amazing grace from heart and tell you what a Christian believes. He'd come through the door with his Bible and sit on the very same pew. He was somebody looking the part. But the one thing nobody knew was he was somebody who needed a friend. Oddly enough, that's a song written by Jason Cox that's titled That Somebody Was Me. Why do we, the human side of us, not strive to meet people where they need for help from heaven, which is the spirit side of us? Personally, just to give you an example, I was raised in church. I remember stories of being every Sunday in the nursery of this church almost from the time I was brought home from the hospital. Through the years as I was growing up, I sang or tried to sing in the choir. I was somewhat the head of the bass section in the choir. I was the chief usher on Wednesday nights. I was unofficially the student leader of the youth group. I was in church four times a week, whether I needed to or not. Even as I grew up a little bit, I ended up working in religious radio stations in all different formats in many different states. Literally baptized into two different denominations. Had an officially sanctioned religious wedding, traveled on several religious pilgrimages. Yet on the death of my wife, no one from either denomination even wanted to be there for me, but one single person who is a personal friend of both of us. Any wonder why we have a sudden shift from churches or from religion to spiritual but not religious? Probably because I have no longer have someone to meet them at their point of need. Years ago when I was interested in religious radio, back in the eighties, tell you how old I am, there was a book written by James Engel called What's Gone Wrong with the Harvest. I think that's one of the things that we in the religious community have not taken seriously. If we just throw a message out there and hope everybody throws something against the wall and hope something sticks, it's not going to take care of or meet anybody's need. If we don't meet their need, they're not going to come back. But had fallen on difficult days, and the numbers were dwindling, and they were down to only five monks. And they knew if something didn't happen soon they would disappear. Kind of sounds like our trend towards spiritual but not religious. The monastery was surrounded by a beautiful forest next to the monastery. Deep in the woods there was a little hut in which lived a rabbi. He lived as a hermit all alone. Wondering one day if the hermit may be able to offer the monk some advice, the abbot of the monastery decided to visit him. The rabbi welcomed the abbot to his hut. When the abbot explained his purpose, the rabbi could do all he could do was commem commiserate with him. I know how it is, he said. So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together, read some scriptures together, and when the time came to leave, they embraced each other, and the abbot said, Well, it's been a wonderful visit and nice to meet you after all these years, but I've failed in my purpose because there's no piece of advice that you gave me that would save my dying aunt monastery. No, I am sorry, the rabbi responded. I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is the Messiah is in you. Couple key lines in that I think have applied this in more ways than one, but first of all, the problem was identified that all the spirit has gone out of the people and concluded with Remember the Messiah is in you. Do we show that? Do we present that to others? Do we actually make a genuine attempt to get to know everybody that comes through our doors? Everybody we come in contact with, understand their situation, try and figure out their need. If not, then we understand why people are leaving churches and religions and identifying as spiritual but not religious. We're back to what's gone wrong with the harvest. When we are at our loneliness, we are still never, ever, really alone. And I kinda stole that last line from another song. The words that part of the words of that song go, but we're never, ever really alone. Never by ourselves, never without hope, never without help. We're never ever out of our own or on our own. Lauren Calley wrote that in her song in the room. Of course we know now that we are never ever really alone because now we know that our spirit team has always been with us, always been ready to help us, has always been looking out for us, even when we were unaware. Remember the footprint story we talked about recently? When you look back and only saw one set of footprints, that's when I was carrying you. You'd be surprised if you go back and look at it how many times in this lifetime inside this life's plan, your spirit team has carried you. The one thing we know about scripture is Jesus was all about example. He led by example, he showed the way by example, he gave illustrations as an example. He didn't just sit inside a church and wait people for people to come in through the doors. When he encountered people, he didn't profile anyone before providing help and support. Most importantly, he did not look on the human of the person in front of him. He looked on the spirit. If we are spirits inside a human suit, our problems in relating begin when we focus more on the suit than the spirit inside. If we as spirits ourselves return to the eight C's of our true selves and love all spirits like Christ loved us and commanded us to love, we forget the human suit and focus our thoughts, love, intentions, and growth on everyone, no matter their past, their free will choices, or their human suit. We then truly make heaven real to all spirits everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

We hope you learned something new about God's love and his resources during our time together. Please like and subscribe so you don't miss out. You can find our social media links and our contact info in the show notes. When you're commenting, please reference the episode number. Join us next time as we again search out the ways of making heaven real in this life with Gordon Merrill.