Pilgrim
I think I will make this my last post on this topic.
I will start by saying that at this point in my life, if I believed I had to leave the Church I am presently in and was faced with not going to a local body, because there wasn’t a Reformed Church I probably would stay home. This has to do with the fact my children are grown and I don’t need to consider them in the equation as much as before. I realize my wife would probably start attending the same Church as one of my daughters; but I could not do so.
I have not got time to look up passages of Scripture to show you where am coming from, to which I used years ago to help me make the decision to stay in the particular Church I stayed in.
However, I will tell you a few things that I had to consider through that period in my life.
At that time, my switch (if I can put it that way) to Reformed theology was relatively new and back then I had many a sleepless night even going through that process. For a time although I had actually made the switch, because I believed it was Biblical, to be quite frank I did not like it. However, during that process I came to realize (partly through Roman 9) that I was looking at the whole matter through my old way of looking at things. It was like a light switched on and I realized it is not about me, it is about Him.
I wanted to find a body of believers that was in keeping with what I now believed, but I soon found out that there were no Churches around that shared my beliefs, though there were many Christians in my own Church that shared my beliefs. Many of whom I shared and continue to share great fellowship with. As you probably know, I didn’t have it easy in my home life, because of what I believed and I wondered if I shouldn’t be leaving that Church and staying home.
Some of the questions I wrestled with because of that were.
Are the people where I was attending genuine Christians? To which, after a long period of time, I ended up believing yes many were.
If, I did leave based on everything I know, would I be willing to live with the consequences of going against my wife and children and even the Reformed Christians I actually knew?
The answer I ended up with is no, not unless things got much worse. Both my wife and I left that Church years later, when we moved to another city.
Other than some Reformed Christians such as you on the web, the vast majority counseled me to stay put until God opened an opportunity to go to a body that is truly Reformed.
Did I make the correct decision? I am not sure, but that decision was not an easy one.
Tom