WHY I WENT BACK TO CHURCH AFTER DECADES OF HIDING FROM GOD
Lately it seems as though many of the things which I thought mattered, which I would have said were my goals and dreams, what excited me or lit me up, even what I thought was my destiny and just ‘should be’, just do NOT.
It could just be that I’m in that season of life, coming up to 40 in a few months, priorities shifting and changing and all, but I don’t really think age has anything to do with it.
I think that regardless of age, and also regardless of background, experience, past beliefs or ‘certainties’, the season I’m in is the same season many people are in right now, and it is one which I will call ‘The Season of God Calling You Home’.
You can leave this blog right now if that triggers or bores you, or it just feels not for you, but if it DOES trigger you I’m guessing you best be staying, and indeed if any part of you feels itchy, uncomfortable, restless, or simply curious –
How audacious! Did she actually just say God is talking through her?! The nerve!
Yep. It is what it is, onwards! And, rule of TRUE success in life -> get out of your own way and allow yourself to be used for what is meant to come through you; you were BORN worthy and it’s not about what your fear-led EGO thinks about it!
Will you?
We can come back to that
For now, where to start?
Just now I was journaling, and I found myself writing about how FUNNY it is that I never just ‘got’ until now that if I would just surrender to God, and follow His will, it would set me free.
I grew up Christian. My Grandfather was a preacher, my Uncle too. I went to church NUMEROUS times each week, my entire childhood and teen years! And I don’t mean these modern day bite-sized little 60 or 70 minute long services, I mean I went to CHURCH. Haha. Much of the time, you’d only get out when they let you out, and then you’d be back a few hours later for the night service. Not to mention all the extra things most weeks.
Anyway, I always knew, and I never NOT believed. I stood up at school and got my ass handed to me in Science for arguing creation over evolution with my teacher, and refusing to back down, having (surprise surprise!) an answer for anything she could come up with.
OF COURSE THERE’S A DAMN ANSWER TO COUNTER ANY ANTI-CREATION NONSENSE, TRUTH IS NEVER OUT OF THINGS TO SAY.
I NEVER questioned that any of it was true. Even when I questioned it – curiosity to understand more – my SOUL didn’t question. I have, despite the choices I then went on to make in my adult life, always believed.
But yet –
For the most part, I never felt connected.
I didn’t feel that I KNEW God. And I didn’t feel I knew how to know Him, despite being surrounded at every turn by a God-filled life.
A small side note here, for those who also grew up in church and do not have fond memories of that, have felt that the whole God-thing was something which HURT them –
That’s not the God, or the church, I ever knew. In the Pentecostal church in which I was raised, unconditional love was what was taught and also lived, and it was an only positive and uplifting environment; one in which I learned much of what I needed to know about life, you could say. REALLY, my entire message – of being born for more, called to a higher purpose, BORN worthy – has always just been what I learned in church, and BELIEVED! I just haven’t had the church / God bit running through it so strongly before. I certainly never denied it though, and have mentioned this often.
To close this side note – my point is, if you had an ill experience of church or of God in your life, and it’s hardened your heart; made you feel wary or angry, a) that’s not truly God and b) there is another way. Also c) you’re still here reading, so obviously something is calling you
So.
I never felt connected. Or perhaps I did, at certain moments as a child; I remember having great prophecies spoken over my life, things which I always believed as well and which I now see coming to life of course, and I was certainly always IN it (the Christian life), but as I grew older, teen years, I started to feel like I was missing something.
We’d been living in Germany for a few years, and when we returned to Australia and the 4000+ peopled church there, all my friends had been swept up in some kinda revolution and I just felt like I never ever quite caught up. I really TRIED –
I just never seemed to feel what everyone else was feeling, you know?
And I started to think –
Maybe it’s not for me.
Maybe I’m NOT called (by God at least!).
Maybe God just doesn’t really want to know me!
After a half dozen or so attempts to recommit and REALLY ‘decide’, and then feeling like it still hadn’t taken, I think I just unconsciously gave up.
And slowly but surely the whole going to church or even trying to connect with God thing just faded out of my life, probably from the age of 19 or 20 on. I still went now and then, but I was never AGAINST any of it. But I wasn’t FOR it. And like it or not, when you’re not for something?
You ARE against it.
Maybe you’re thinking right now about how you’ve tried so many times to connect to your message, and the art you’re meant to do in the world … my words today will resonate for certain with some folks around their relationship, or lack thereof, with God, and for others it will be about how they’ve repeatedly ‘tried’ to commit to do their purpose work, and just never quite managed to feel it. Leading to gradually giving up, deciding ‘it’s not for me, or it would have clicked in by now’. Maybe for you you’re thinking of God AND your message, your soul work! Well, either way – let me tell you:
IT IS FOR YOU.
The younger me didn’t know what I can now say with confidence and ABSOLUTE certainty:
Deciding is not enough.
You have to practice following THROUGH on that commitment –
Every day –
For the rest of your LIFE.
If you can’t do that, don’t bother starting at all, but trust me – YOU CAN DO THAT. And, soul message, God, or both, maybe, just maybe, you know – your life depends on it.
I didn’t know that ‘feeling’ something has nothing to do with whether or not you show up for a thing. Make space for it. WAIT, in its presence. And allow the spirit (Holy or otherwise; I’d be careful with otherwise though!) to come through you.
In my writing … in doing my purpose work … in creating this multi-million dollar soul-led EMPIRE … I have had to learn about patience. About dropping in. About allowing space and time and being in the VOID, in order for the magic to come through. AND IT ALWAYS DOES. So, people wonder how I am so prolific, such a content Queen, ‘always inspired’; I’m not! I just committed to the practice of showing up, sitting my ass in the chair, and BEING THE DAMN VESSEL.
What if you made that commitment today? For your art? For superflow? For your higher self? Or even – for GOD?
“What’s with the whole going back to church thing”, my ex-husband asked me the other day as he picked up the kids. I was expressing concerns over whether our kids should be allowed to attend ‘values’ classes at school over Religion. I’m not pro RELIGION necessarily as a concept (certainly not anti it either; I just mean – religion is not church or God, not always, that’s for sure!) … but I dunno about ‘values’. What are they teaching there? To be watered down? Have an ‘open’ mind? Accept everything that your soul inherently knows is just not RIGHT? Teaching the ways of current society? Hmmm! No thank you! I have to just hear what it’s about is all; I just want to find out what’s being taught before I know if it aligns.
“It’s not like it ever did anything anyway”, he continued. An understandable viewpoint considering the terribly messy implosion that was the gradual death of our marriage.
“Well – ” (I said)
– “it’s not as though I was really going to church when we were together. I wasn’t connected to God for a LONG while before we even met”.
I’m not saying that if I had been things would be different in our marriage! Although I dare say they would have been, as my choices earlier in life would have led me down a different path. Anyway – ALL IS PERFECT AND AS IT SHOULD BE AND I TAKE PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ALL OF IT, including all my choices.
But the question did get me thinking. Why did I go back to church?
“Because it was time. Because I always knew I would. And because I started to really think about how negligent I felt I was being not even giving my kids the chance to understand this stuff, and be grounded in it”.
I could (nearly!) allow my own life to be fettered away without God, but when it hit me that my kids didn’t even KNOW to choose for or against God I was brought to my knees in shock at my own blindedness all these years. And it was definitely a catalyst for me to drop fully back in to something I have certainly never denied, and indeed often talked about and preached on online, but no, not been active in, not chosen to make time and space for daily, not allowed a relationship to GROW.
Thing is though, like I said –
I always knew I would.
The entire time I’ve been building this platform I have KNOWN it would be about something bigger than me just making shit up and throwing it at the Internet, selling online.
I mean – messaging is ALWAYS about something bigger. But, I mean I knew God would eventually come through strong up in this baby. I have also never doubted that the prophecies were true. That I am called to speak to millions. And that I am at my core – a preacher and one who is called to empower others to say yes to THEIR calling.
Again – NOT JUST ABOUT FREAKING BUSINESS.
I’ve been conscious through many of the times of tribulation online, when my inner strength has been called on to grow, when I’ve learned to be tenacious, to be resilient, to be unswayed regardless of what is thrown at me, to STAND BY MY TRUTH, that it was all just preparation.
Every moment up til now has prepared you for this.
This moment right here is preparing you for all that is to come.
Are you ready?!
‘It’s so funny’ (I wrote in my journal earlier). ‘I’ve spent my whole adult life chasing freedom. Creating financial freedom. Creating a life where I can do what I want all day every day, and only follow soul. Looking for what is going to allow me to feel FULLY fulfilled, at peace, whole’.
My Mum always said … (something like this) “the thing people are searching for is God. Whether they know it or not”.
I KNEW to my core that this was truth. But, I allowed myself to believe the lies of the Devil which said that it was ‘maybe’, or that if I was going to feel it then by now I should have felt it. No! You feel something when you make space for it, and sit in the space, when you commit and then FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THE PRACTICE TO MATCH IT. When you say yes because you’re being nudged to, not because the ‘how’ is all mapped out before you!
This is true in EVERY part of life! You will NEVER do your purpose work if you don’t understand this. And you may also never know God. Maybe you’re okay with that. Maybe you don’t believe in any of it. Maybe something deeper knows different though. Maybe.
For me, it was also a fear or avoidance or ego-fuelled idea I should have to do everything myself, which led me to never want to SURRENDER, and be held. Not by God, not by a man, not by anyone! Again, lies perpetuated by he who is on path to SWAY us from path.
No, you were never meant to do any of it alone! You GET to be supported. I talk a lot about ‘going quantum’, about tapping in to energies beyond just the physical, about being in CO-creation, and letting things just occur as a result of the energy you’re putting out and choosing into, and from who you BE not what you DO, well …
These last few years, it’s like the walls have just been falling down bit by bit, and then suddenly with one fell swoop BANG, the final guard crumbled.
Wall down.
CRASH – I learned that even though I ‘did’ my way to multi-7-figs / year in biz, really the whole way when things were flowing it was because I was following intuition, and allowing life itself to guide and support me, and when I COMMITTED to that and then showed up to seek it each day, it showed up for me and business, money, life, because a hella lot easier.
Wall down.
But the whole time, there was an underlying anxiety.
Not just the chronic very extreme bouts of anxiety which I’ve written about before and which at times threatened to destroy me, which I’ve long learned how to dance with.
Something deeper. Something more insidious. Something more INSISTENT.
A constant thrum beating through everything I did, telling me –
YOU’RE NOT OKAY.
You KNOW what is missing.
And you WILL return.
But GOD how I held out, huh? Too proud? Too sure of my own unworthiness? Worried it wouldn’t take again? Scared even now that I’m just full of shit? Forgot – or never really learned – that grace is a thing and it’s not about being perfect?! All these things. Especially the last perhaps. Worried what people would think? That too but less than you’d think … I’ve been out there pissing people off for years now, I’m used to it haha, might as well be for something even more powerful than me!!
So why did I return to church? And when I say church, you KNOW I don’t mean a damn building! Why did I decide I will consciously be God-led, and in my always perfectly imperfect state allow myself to be enough for Him but also for ME in a way which despite all I’ve done and allowed I had still never fully dropped into? Why did I decide to stop listening to the nonsense that said I should be feeling something more when I wasn’t making space for it? Why did I then decide to make damn space for it? To give DAILY time and space and me-ness to allow the spirit to take over? To WAIT on God rather than to continue to make Him wait for me?
Well, in the end it was very black and white, same as all things:
You do what you do because you finally realise that you can’t not –
And that the outcome of choosing not is infinitely more horrible (literally, in this case!) then whatever your perceived horrors of giving in to it now are.
This is true for saying yes to your soul work.
It’s true for saying yes to EVERYTHING inside of you.
And it is true for saying yes to giving your life, for what it was given to you.
A month or so back, a client shared with me a prophecy which she had received for me, from God. She asked to share it with me, and of course I said yes.
She shared –
“God said:
He is calling you back to his heart, and your true calling he has for you,
and then on Thursday night about 7ish while I was driving I was prompted to pray for you,
I was led to go deeper in the Spirit so was praying in tongues & had a vision
Which was –
You standing in your house, my view was in front of you, and you started shaking your hair around wildly and while you were doing this bats were circling around your head and you were resisting something.
As I continued to pray I saw you drop to your knees and then an angel was hovering above while the bats were still there and then you fully dropped to the floor and the bats disappeared then the angel came right down over you.
I feel like this was a release and stripping away of the old for you to be able to step into your new level of Glory God has for you.
Amen ❤️“
My soul knew instantly that all of this was true. The resistance. The avoidance. Never RUNNING as such, I don’t feel I ever ran … but hid or shied away? Yes.
And you know what else? No matter how ‘on’ I always have been, how well I’ve shown up, how successful I’ve created every part of my life and self into being, the damn anxiety was always lingering beneath the surface. Draining my LIFEFORCE out of me too, as I chose to carry around the tremendous weight of NOT ACTUALLY SAYING FULLY YES TO ME, and to what I knew was FOR me, even though it’s exactly what I teach and preach on!
Well –
There’s always a new layer to drop into, is there not?
Some are just bigger than others.
And so the walls,
came crashing down.
A final thought:
If you are called, you are called and you can spend your whole life avoiding that, if you like.
But your true hearts purpose and calling will never forsake you, and for as long as you turn away from it a piece of you WILL be missing and your lifeforce WILL be leaking out all over the place.
The good news is?
You can change this any time.
All it takes is all it ever took –
I say yes to my soul.
Life says yes to me.
I love this. You’ve ignited my voice in a time of my own renewal of my faith and being more open about it in my business. Your style and voice is a huge inspiration – in giving me the permission to just do ‘me’ in my business. To stop holding back, and let God continue to work through me as I work to reinvent my business. I can’t worry about anyone I don’t resonate with. I’m glad you found your way back ‘home’.
I just so appreciate you sharing this Cheryl. It’s so beautiful of you to say xx
Hi Katrina,
I have just come across this article and you have given me some real food for thought. I felt like I was reading a reflection on my own life. Really jolted me. Thank you for your honesty.
You are so welcome Jason! Love knowing it resonates and I appreciate you saying 🙂
[…] years saying I was soul-led. I was teaching spirit-led. And saying soul. I’d mentioned about God CONVICTING me, and how I’d basically fallen down the slippery-dip of ALL.THINGS.HIM.FOREVER.AMEN. very soon […]
[…] stopped fighting. I stopped running. I stopped hiding. I stopped waiting to feel or know something. And I just decided […]