Feeling disillusioned?

If your faith journey began with a response to the promise of a relationship with God, you may over time have become a little disillusioned. For those who came to faith, largely because of the threat of hell, then the anxiety maybe a bit different, but might well be there all the same. If you have always been a Churchgoer, and for you Churchgoer and Christian are synonymous then the feeling may be less obvious, more a wondering if that's it?

I would say that on two separate occasions God has spoken to me, in ways that I was immediately aware of, on many other occasions, I would say that I have been aware of his nudging me in a particular direction. Including the direction of ordained ministry. Yet this does not seem to be the "Jesus as your best friend" relationship that Christians talked about and without wishing to pass to much judgement on other peoples relationships with God I struggle when people tell me that they just chat away to God and God chats back, just like you would having coffee in Starbucks with your mate. Partly I am suspicious because this chatty God never has terribly interesting things to say, this God seems to have become more god, without mystery or majesty. This God does not seem to challenge the way we think or demand that we become more than we already are, become the person we were created to be.

I value my disillusionment, my sense that I have not arrived, that somehow I am yet to catch hold of what the Kingdom really is. That sense of disatisfaction keeps me coming back to God , it means that even as I try to lead two churches, I remain a seeker. I seek a fuller picture of who God is, a clearer understanding of who I am called to be and an understanding of what Church might be.

I am convinced that Church and the relationships that exist within it have the potential to be healing, revelatory and to be places where we see the Kingdom in action. They can also be places where people are judged, damaged, and convinced that if there is a God then that God has no interest in them, and that they are only welcome as second class citizens. I want to catch hold of the vision of Church as liberating and healing and a revelation of the love of God. Some times I get a sense of it, other times I just have to accept feeling disillusioned.