Several weeks ago, we received an email from a listener. Here is an excerpt from that email:
In a nutshell, I feel like I am in the very beginning stages of “Message Recovery”… terrified of attending “any church”, still struggling with fear of “damnation” and “total confusion” of who/what God is vs. the Indoctrination of the Message.
Your Podcasts were my turning point….thank you so much for putting them out there….
Thank you, I wait every Sunday for a new one to be released….they are my Lifeline right now. Struggling with severe depression, but the Podcasts have helped immensely.
I am looking forward to the subject of “Message Recovery, you have decided to leave….now what….where do we go…what do we do…where in society and the non-message church world do we fit in?”
I FEEL LIKE AN ALIEN, I never felt comfortable and like I measured up or fit in at the Message Church or among the people….and felt like a person caught in between worlds outside…always awkwardly never finding the place for me…and always critical, filtering other churches against Message standards….so I just want to sit down in the middle of the street a cry….I am a lost sheep.
One thing I discovered….when you push WMB out of the way….it is startling that behind him the entire time there was Christ on the Cross…!! WMB was impeding and interfering with my ability to function or having a relationship with Christ. I was too busy trying to meet the Message Criteria, and give reverence to the Message and the Prophet….which seemed to totally exclude the Simplicity of God’s Love and the Salvation Christ alone offers!
We have reached out to a number of people that have left the message and asked them for their thoughts on the question posed by our listener – “You have decided to leave….now what….where do we go…what do we do…where in society and the non-message church world do we fit in?”
This podcast seeks to answer our listener’s question.
External Links:
- Find a Community Bible Study in your area
- Find a Celebrate Recovery group in the US
- Find a Celebrate Recovery group in Canada
- Find an Alpha course near you
Music – One Day by Matt Redman from Glory song (2017) – available from iTunes.
Oh my God. In this podcast, you are talking to me. This one is the best.
There are a lot of people like you. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to help.
I went to church on Sunday 31st December for the first time in almost 13years!
It was a small gathering, most of the regulars were away, so we read from the Bible, sang songs of praise and worshipped God. They made me feel so welcome. I’m not sure this is the right church for me, but this is definitely the first step!I
Thank you once again for your podcasts and continued work for us and those still in the message.
It took my wife and I the better part of a year to find a church where we got the kind of preaching we needed. But our experience in looking for a church was a great experience. We found out first hand that what we had been taught about churches outside the message was completely false.
Thank you for this episode, I liked it very much.
Some more things I found helpful in my own journey of recovery:
1. Start listening to new music. Your favorite songs full of memories and emotions will make you feel even more “homesick” for the community you just left. I felt terribly lonely after leaving my actually really awesome little church and tried to find a bit of comfort by soaking in some of their congregational singing and some other music I used to enjoy, but no matter how good the songs were, it made everything worse for me.
2. If you are single when leaving the message, be very careful about dating and pursuing a relationship and wait until you gained a bit of peace for yourself and until you figured out who you are and what you want in life. Otherwise you could hurt others deeply.
3. Be kind to the ones who raised you. If your parents are still in the message, you might feel like yelling at them that they told you lies and they ruined your life. However, most likely they did the best they knew to do, and they will need a lot of grace to find their own way out.
Wish you all the best and I hope you don’t do as much harm to yourself and other people as I did when I left the message. God have mercy on us…
This is wise counsel. As Paul said in Gal. 5:6 – The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.