Why I still run to Church instead of away from it!

Why I still run to Church instead of away from it!

I did not run from Church, I ran to Church because of the sinful world I lived in, because of having to live in the public school system with "R" & "X" rated insults on a daily basis of my life for 4 years, because the people at Church did not curse me, because they told me they loved me and said they were praying for me.

Stephen Manley once said the Church is a lot like the Ark, in that if it wasn't for what was going on outside, you could not stand the stench on the inside.

Because I was saved in the Church of the Nazarene, and because God told me to when I was 11, I went to Trevecca Nazarene University and majored in Religion.

Looking back, it kept me from great evil I would have fallen into going to a state university, and I could go for "FREE" being the son of a deceased US Army Veteran from KY.

But God left me a little money from Dad's death, I did not know about until I was 16, so before that, I promised God I would go there even if I had to do the Army Reserves. When I found out I had $100,000 in Tax-Free Municipal Bonds, blood money from his death, when lawyers sued the state of Alaska over the National Guard drunk driver who killed him when he ran his truck carrying tanks over his car, they were awarded $2.4 million dollars and kept all by $90,000 which they gave to Mom. Mom spent $30,000 to buy a trailer and two new cars she needed for me and my new half-brother Tim, since she married Dad 52 years ago, and put $60,000 in Municipal Bonds and also put all social security and VA benefits I received until I had $100,000 at age 18.

Had I gone to a KY University for free and invested that money, I could have lived very comfortably today, never having to work, but Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all that he had and to follow him, and so I spent all I had on my education and in helping family & friends and have no regrets.

I wasn't able to finish my Master of Divinity and had to leave graduate school to look after Mom when she was sick, and moved home and went to work. Best thing I ever did. In 1988, after I paid my Church's budgets anonymously and went before the Church of the Nazarene Ministerial and Credentials Boards, I was denied a District License, with great fear on their behalf on what I was learning at Trevecca. It was my Sophomore year, and I had Christian thought and Matthew & Mark Classes. I had not even had H. Ray Dunning for Systematic Theology yet.

In 1995, while attending my old home Church of the Nazarene in Morgantown, KY Pastor Gary Henry encouraged me to go back and apply for a District License. My Dad had told the assistant Pastor of my anonymous payment of the Church's Budgets in Franklin, KY in 1988, and word spread across the district and along with having completed my education, I was more than read and able to answer theology questions and received my District License from KY in 1995, but I moved to TN, and was unemployed between jobs, before I started my 5 years in Mainframe Operations with the State of TN, and went before the TN Credentials Board, who did not know me, or of my history in KY, and told me they felt like Jesus didn't call me to preach, so they would not renew my license in TN.

So I worked with Cornerstone Ministries upgrading their Computers for their kids and helping tutor them after school, then God blessed me with 5 years in Mainframe Operations from the State of TN.

Corrupt Management there fired me when I had been there 5 years and 2 months, because at 5 years and 3 months I was eligible to join the state union, draw a pension, and be eligible to be a manager.

Then 9/11 happened a week later and I was relieved to not be working for Government in the midst of anthrax attacks, and not knowing how far terrorist plan to strike the infrastructure and the data center had a line to the US Treasury in DC for all tax revenue that would have been crippled badly along with all other state resources. Thank God it never happened.

So I went home to KY and began to work with a Church of God Mission Project where I was an Associate Pastor for 2 years, having done 18 hours of graduate work on my M. DIV at Anderson University's School of Theology in 1992/1993.

Well, long story short, the Senior Pastor lost his mind and destroyed the Church he built. I think God had me there so former members have not lost faith, online they still call me Pastor or Pastor George from time to time.

I went from working with youth in Nashville & BowlingGreen through Compassionate Ministry Inner City Projects from 1987 to 2004, and in 2013 began to work with the ministry to men and women in the half-way houses who came to work for Bluegrass Supply Chain Services, since it was a privately-owned Christian Company which encouraged you to share your faith. I remember I was attending Richpond Baptist between jobs when they said they needed men to mentor men in these half-way houses who were trying to put their lives back together, and I said quietly in Church, "God I would love to help, but I don't have a job right now"and not only did God give me a job, but a job where we worked with staffing agencies that recruited from the half-way houses.

I go to Church to help improve it, because it was never perfect, not even in ACTS, where you see Paul rebuke Peter, and then he gets upset when John Mark flees persecution, but then Barnabas wants to give him a second chance like Barnabas gave Paul, and Paul says no, leaving with Silas, but without second chance Barnabas, John Mark's Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, the first Gospel, that both Matthew and Luke are based off of, would have never been written. Paul and Peter reconciled when Peter went to Rome to fundraise for Luke's writing of his Gospel and Acts on appeal to Claudius, but Nero came to power and had Paul beheaded and Peter crucified upside down, which Jesus had foretold. Yet people today avoid Church because it is not perfect? The Church is where two or three are gathered in Jesus name, so as long as you have 2 to 3 Good Trees bearing good fruit you have fellowship, which is why Morgantown Church of the Nazarene with its 35 members was so beloved to me, not rich, not perfect, not wealthy, but an Ark indeed in the midst of the storms of life in my youth which threatened to destroy me.

Now occasionally, you will find bad trees producing bad fruit: hate, despair, discord, impatience, cruelty, wickedness, and reckless abandon. It wears on the soul, and it is why you have to stay close to the Vine!,

You can't be a wild branch far from the vine. In real vineyards, they cut such branches off, because the grapes are sour, the branches have to be close together to produce good fruit.

The same is true spiritually, you can't claim to be close to the VIne Jesus, and be far from the other grafted in vines, being a gentile, and not a Jew. It is very healthy to be around branches producing good fruit: Love, joy, peace, patience/forbearance, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.

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' “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. '

John 15:1-6

https://my.bible.com/bible/111/JHN.15.1-6 +++++++++++++++

'If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either. Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you also will be cut off. And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree! '

Romans 11:17-24

https://my.bible.com/bible/111/ROM.11.17-24 +++++++++++++++ Evidence - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zotmQph6xEc&list=PLOqiEYwhz4FT2UWhlwarzxRKNgZDpVNUD&index=92