Thomas Spencer
I now see that I have never fit in. I was always the kid with more questions than answers; I was named Thomas for a reason. I was not one to believe things until I could see them with my own eyes. Oh, I was popular in school because I was an overachiever. I was an overachiever because I was never satisfied with my current condition. Throw in sexual abuse, competition with my three older brothers for our parents’ attention, plus spirits of fear of death and depression from my younger sister dying just after birth and you get me; Thomas a kid who never fit in. Today is no different and perhaps worst but now I finally understand!
Jesus speaking about His disciples and you and me:
I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. John 17:17 (NKJV)
It seemed lonely for years but today I have embraced the fact that we are not supposed to fit in. People in the world hate me because the Holy Spirit of God in me agitates the demonic spirit in them. The truth is I don’t belong here I am just visiting at best. This earth… it isn’t my home and one day I will be leaving. This world and its earthly cares have no place for me.
The things that matter to my worldly neighbors, town and government mean nothing to me. For evangelism sake I can relate with sinners and what is important to them but only for a while and then I move on to Truth. This is part of a song I have sung for 40 years: “Turn your eyes upon Jesus…and the things of earth shall grow strangely deem in the light of His Glory and Grace.”
Leaders in the organized religious institutions hate me because I am a threat to their very existence and members of those denominations hate me because I have been labelled as rebellious and a nonconformist trying to divide The True Church and sinfully scatter our Lord’s sheep. I am in good company for the religious said the same about our Lord Jesus.
Matthew 11:18 “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ 19 The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a winebibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’…”
Matthew 23 – Jesus hands out 7 woes to the religious leaders of the day and calls them all hypocrites. Believe me 2000 years nothing has changed.
I was first discipled in the Assembly of God denomination and while in their Bible College I did a report on: When the Methodist denomination lost it power. One of the devastating turns was when they tried to fit in and transitioned from a Holy Ghost, rolling on the floor, tongue talking, Spirit filled, evangelistic healing movement into…well… what they have today. Today they fit in; they have become the same as the world they live in. My paper concluded that the Assemblies of God did the same (just like all of the rest of the denominations).
When I wrote my first book: The Church What is it? now revised to: Church what it is and is not, I was told by my “god father” in Kansas, that if I published it I would never minister in Kansas again.
I no longer fit in. So what is the answer, what do we do?
- Love God, love people (I got that from my brother’s ministry in Pittsburg Kansas).
- Assemble together with those of like faith as often as you can.
- Pray & ask our Lord Jesus if there is anything else you are to do before He calls us home.
- Press your wedding clothes because we have an appointment to a wedding in Heaven!
That is my simple list of 4 are yours different? Please share them!
Thomas Spencer
