THE GOSPEL

 I have always been somewhat of an introvert throughout my life, especially around people I do not know very well and in social situations.  When I was young I followed the close friends that I had in these situations in interacting with people and was able to pull it off pretty well.  These few friends were easily able to act in a very normal way in groups of people and I just followed their lead in conversations and such until I felt comfortable with what I was facing in a particular moment.  My elementary school school friends, Doug, Mark and Phil allowed me to walk across these social land mines as I progressed.   During my High school years it was Ronnie, Scott and Larry as well as Debbie that filled this requirement that I had in society.  All of these friends may not have realized I was using them as a shield during these moments but I was.  They were good at being social while I was not.

After I met Barbara, she took over that role.  Barbara was as extremely outgoing as I was extremely shy, unsure of myself and very hesitant about putting myself out there for the world to see.   My whole life has been one of hiding the real me to anyone that I did not know very well, protecting myself from being judged by the world concerning my social awkwardness.  Barbara made new friends and her friends became mine.  Barbara participated in social events while I tagged along for the ride.

After Barbara died I found myself left on my own.  My social interactions were restricted to family members, both immediate and extended.  I was fairly good interacting with people that were mine and Barbara's friends, well mainly Barbara's friends that were mine my default, but even in those situations I feel like I was holding back, slipping into that shell that I hid in as a child and young adult.  I became detached from a lot of those people without Barbara to be a social buffer for me.  I simply did not, and still don't know how to interact smoothly in a social confrontation.

After Barbara passed I reconnected with an old friend of mine.  Lisa had lost her husband a few years before I lost Barbara.  We have been hanging out together and are pretty close friends.  Lisa and I are both a little gun shy when it comes to people one or the other of us do not know.  She has become a big help in my tiptoeing through those awkward situations with her friends and I helping her in situations with mine.  We compliment each other fairly well.

Lisa and I cannot be with each other all of the time though because of events going on in her life and things going on in mine so each of us still have a lot of times where we find ourselves on our own to deal with these situations. I think she is making progress while I am still stumbling through each day.

I started noticing a change in my personality over the last several months to a year concerning how I interact with people.  As most of you know I do have a severe anxiety problem that I have been working on for several years.  Now I am trying to deal with it on my own.  The change in this part of my personality is something like this.  Someone starts to talk to me and I respond.  I respond but with a little bit of anxiety thrown into the mix.  I seem to start off ok I think, but soon I notice my voice and actions becoming more animated, I start talking faster and when asked a question at this point my answer turns into this long roundabout way, throwing in facts that are not related taking a long time to say very little in a voice where I cannot control the volume, the speed or make any sense at all.  After one of these encounters I find myself back in the house thinking about what I had said and how I responded and to be totally honest, I feel embarrassed.  I feel ridiculous like I made a total fool of myself.  I end up beating myself up over it telling myself "stupid stupid stupid".

I feel like it hit a new high point of embarrassment lately.  I have decided to return to a church that has been a very important part of my life in First Baptist Grandview.  Barbara and I had left the church in the mid to late nineties because we both felt the church, and the inner politics that come with it, were heading in a complete opposite direction than where we felt a church should be headed.  Let me interject an aside here:  We were wrong to do so.  It showed we had given up on the church and instead of fighting to make changes and corrections, we ran away.  There are members of the church still there that had faith and stayed and pretty much got the church back on track,  I truly admire these people from my past.  It could not have been easy but they did it and now I am going back to a much stabler church than the one I left so many years ago.

Okay you say.  What does all of this have to do with The Gospel?  I feel like I have not given my Christian testimony on this blog which is bad considering how long the blog has existed.  My social awkwardness and my anxiety as of late has brought me to the realization of the changes going on in my mind in how I deal with talking and explaining and people looking at me like I am an out of control idiot.  I feel like I am seen as obnoxious to these people who I am meeting at the church as they try to get to know me.  So here it is.

Dr. Mike Nelson came to Grandview quite a while after Barbara and I had left.  He came to the church when it was at a critical point as far as Grandview saw the church and I believe the church had been damaged.  Not because of the immediate predecessor to Dr. Nelson, but because of the actions of some of the members.  What I have seen in that church is a healing process that has taken several years.  Dr. Nelson has put into place things that the church had lost.  He has led a tweaking of the church constitution, which is badly needed and in reality, a bit more Biblical than the one written so very long ago.  The church is growing under his pastoral leadership.

One of the things that has changed is the way in which the church takes in new members.  Back in the old days, when I became a professed Christian and church member at the ripe old age of ten or so, all a person had to do was go forward during the invitation hymn and profess their faith and belief and ask to be a member of the church.  The pastor would ask the church, more or less, "So, what do you think?  Do we accept them as a new member?" and the church would say "Sure!!" and that was that.  A new Christian and a new member of the church.  It was this approach that led to the situation that made Me and Barbara decide to leave First Grandview.

Dr. Nelson has put into place a format for membership that I feel every church should have.  The prospective member starts to attend the church and begins to be a part of it, just like the old days, but then the changes come.  Dr. Nelson has established a "New Members Class" or seminar in which you meet with other potential members in a class and Dr. Nelson leads a discussion with the group into what the church believes, how it stands on individual faith, belief and character.  After completing the class Dr. Nelson has a meeting with you individually.  He asks a lot of questions concerning your faith, the path that your life has taken over the years, and your over all testimony as to how you came to be a Christian.  During this time it also gives him a good understanding of who you are and allows him to get to know you on a personal level.  If there comes up questions in his mind as to whether there may be a problem, he takes it to other leaders in the church to discuss.  If there is a problem, you are made aware of what it might be so you can work on that part of your life.  If there are no red flags, then he presents you to the church for membership, the church knowing you have been fully vetted.  I see this as cutting off a lot of future problems that could arise down the road, as it did way back in the 90's.

This is where my anxiety kicks in. I started attending services.  Then I started attending Sunday School classes.  My new social personality slipped in and I talked, well like I described earlier.  Then I decided that I was being led back to this church so I signed up for New members class.  Oh my, I felt like my anxiety kicked into second gear when I would try to talk.  I would end up going home trying to figure out how to control my anxiety while in these situations.

Then came my individual talk with Dr. Nelson.  I felt like it was a disaster.  I talked about myself and how I had been raised in the church.  I talked about my family, my parents and my siblings and how active we were in the church.  I talked about how at 10 years old I understood what it meant to be a Christian and had been baptized.  Then cam the married years.  I told him about Barbara and all of her children's choirs she had created over the years in the churches we had attended.  I told him about how I helped Barbara by playing the piano for her kids, how that had turned into playing piano for an adult special needs class and eventually playing for the Children's Church service every week.  I spoke of my years as a deacon at the church.  My introduction to church politics and how that had been a HUGE eye opener for me as far as the church was concerned and how that eventually led me and Barb to leave First Grandview for another church.

At the end of our talk, he observed that I had mentioned the Gospel several times and wanted to know what I meant by the Gospel.  What did I think the Gospel was.  I gave a short quick answer that, in my mind, does not suffice in describing the Gospel.  I told Dr. Nelson that earlier in my life I would probably quote John 3:16 to describe the Gospel but since that time I had discovered 1st Corinthians 15.  We discussed that chapter of the Bible and then the talk was over.

Since that day I have given it a lot of thought.  What exactly IS the Gospel in my belief.  Here is my answer:

The Gospel is the Bible taken as a whole, both Old and New Testaments,  I believe that when you study The Book you can find not only God, but Jesus the Son throughout the entirety of it, again both Old and New Testaments.  The Gospel is The Word Of God, written by men who were told what to write by God.  Many people say inspired by God and I think that works as well.  It is a book that explains to us that God is The trinity, The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. It is a book on how to live life, a godly life.  It is a book on what God expects of us and a book of God's incredible love for each and every one of us.  It is a book that explains how each and everyone of us are flawed because of the fall of man in Eden and that we can never live up to God's standard.  It is a book that tells how God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to teach us and much more.  Jesus was born to a virgin, conceived to be pure and without sin by God.  Jesus was the ultimate Sacrifice to God by God to atone for our imperfections, or sins.  It is a book that gives us hope and assurance that Christ acts as our intermediary between us and God so that our sins are forgiven.  It is a book that tells how Jesus, after being Sacrificed was taken back into Heaven through the Ascension to sit on the right hand of God.   It is a book that tells of God then sending the Holy Spirit to fill our lives and helps us on our journey towards what God wants us to be.  It is a book that saves us from eternal damnation to an eternal life in the Presence of God.  It is a book that tells us that the only way to be forgiven and saved is to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and came to earth, was sacrificed and rose from the dead to make it possible for God to forgive us of our oh so imperfect lives.

We fall short on a daily basis in God's eyes.  Many times a day.  None of us are perfect.  It is impossible.  We are human.  God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the Trinity, Three in One.

The Gospel is the entire Bible.  Every word of it given to us by God for us. It is a Book that should be taken seriously and studied and to learn from.  To gain knowledge and wisdom.  I do not believe any man can understand the Bible totally.  There is so very much in it. 

That might sound a bit ... disorganized of an explanation, but that is how my mind works these days.

So, to me that is what The Gospel is.  It is what I believe and what I hold dear.