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You Can Have A Full Life in the Emptiest of Places
By: Susan McKenzie
A modern paraphrase of Isaiah 58, based on "The Message"
I will SHOUT! A full-throated shout! I will hold nothing back – a trumpet-blast shout!
Tell my people what's going wrong with their lives, face my pastors and leaders with their sins!
They're busy, busy, busy at worship, and love their Bible studies.
To all appearances they're an organization of right-living people – law-abiding, God-honoring.
They ask me, "What's the right thing to do?" and love having me on their side.
But they also complain, "Why do we fast and you don't look our way? Why do we humble ourselves and you don't even notice?"
Well, here's why: "The bottom line on your 'fast days' is profit. You drive your church staff and volunteers much too hard. You fast, but at the same time you bicker and fight. You moan and groan when your church members don't have the time, energy, and money you think they should be contributing to your organization.
You fast, but you also swing a mean fist. You demand obedience to your own man-made projects and programs, which made you look so good. To keep your people compliant, you preach against those who question the system, who dare to exit the institution you have created to sustain your paycheck. The kind of fasting you do won't get your prayers off the ground.
Do you think this is the kind of fast day I'm after: a day to show off humility? To put on a pious long face and parade around solemnly in black? Do you call that fasting, a fast day that I, God, would like?
This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the marketplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. Listen – really listen – to what your members are saying, especially those who have been marginalized by the society's systems. Don't assume you know all the answers – really, you don't have to be their God! Instead you load your church members with burdens you dare not lift yourself.
What injustice, do you ask?
You keep wives enslaved to husbands who abuse them at home, behind closed doors. You pervert Scripture, teaching these oppressed victims to "submit to their husbands" even if their husbands are killing their souls and using terror tactics to feed their own egos.
Some of YOU are these very abusers! These women are precious princesses in my Kingdom and you have treated them like whores. You use them, abuse them, and then abandon them. You lick your dirty lips and move on to the next victim.
What I'm interested in seeing you do is:
Share your food with these victims. Many of them become homeless. Invite them into your homes, even to stay for a few months.
Give them the necessities of life so they have the time and space they need to heal, to be restored, to be safe.
Shut your church doors and open your homes, but don't just start a new institution inside of your own four walls!
Simply be available to your own families. Hang out with your friends.
Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way.
The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You'll call out for help and I'll say, "Here I am."
If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins… and instead, set up due process for victims to get help, exposing the abusers for who they are and what they are doing…
If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight.
I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places – firm muscles, strong bones.
You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry.
You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.
If you watch your step on the Sabbath and don't use my holy day for personal advantage,
If you treat the Sabbath as a day of joy, God's holy day as a celebration,
If you honor it by refusing 'business as usual,' making money, running here and there— Then you'll be free to enjoy God!
Oh, I'll make you ride high and soar above it all. I'll make you feast on the inheritance of your ancestor Jacob.
Yes! God says so!
Have you been through some intense, challenging years? Have you been spiritually beaten up in church or in your own home? I'd love to hear your story. As we share stories, hearts are healed and darkness is exposed… please leave me a comment in the box below!
Susan McKenzie knows how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and businesses, and so much more. In a series of letters spanning more than two decades, God gave Susan "The Way Home,' through her personal daily journals to help her in exiting organized religion where she had served in duties ranging from pastor, inner healing and deliverance minister, and Midwest regional coordinator for a large international ministry. In the past decade Susan has been applying the truths she learned and is now publishing her journals for the first time.
If you've ever felt you lost your soul in the midst of a "successful" Christian lifestyle, "The Way Home" is for you! It's a practical guide via stories, poems, dreams and visions all in the context of real life stories. You can register to receive the newsletter, "The Way Home" right now by by clicking here! You will also receive a FREE copy of Susan's upcoming book, "The Way Home: Diary of a Battered Preacher's Wife".
Copyright 2012, Susan McKenzie, http://TeamFamilyOnline.com. Permission is granted to copy, forward, or distribute this article for non-commercial use only, as long as this copyright byline and bio, in totality, is maintained in all duplications, copies, and link references. For reprint permission for any commercial use, in any form of media, please contact Susan McKenzie.
Tagged as:
Choosing Love Today,
Deborah White Dove,
On the Way Home,
True Religion Speaks,
Unbuckle Your Christianity
Susan McKenzie knows how it feels to lose everything: marriage and family, church and reputation, finances and businesses, and so much more. In a series of letters spanning more than two decades, God gave Susan "The Way Home,' through her personal daily journals to help her in exiting organized religion where she had served in duties ranging from pastor, inner healing and deliverance minister, and Midwest regional coordinator for a large international ministry. In the past decade Susan has been applying the truths she learned and is now publishing her journals for the first time.
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