By the time God brought me here, He had removed almost everything I was leaning on.
Religion.
Traditions.
False beliefs.
Spiritual dependency.
The people weren’t necessarily bad.
The churches weren’t necessarily bad.
The leaders weren’t necessarily bad.
But God was exposing something in me.
I had spent years looking for someone to tell me what God was saying.
Someone to explain my life.
Someone to answer my questions.
Someone to guide my next step.
What I didn’t realize was that God was inviting me into something deeper.
Not better information.
Relationship.
For years, I thought discipleship was something another person did for me.
Then God began discipling me Himself.
Not through a pulpit.
Not through a prophet.
Not through a mentor.
Through His Word.
Through His Spirit.
Through obedience.
Through relationship.
I started opening my Bible differently.
Not to prove a doctrine.
Not to defend a position.
Not to find a verse that supported what someone else taught.
I started reading to understand God.
For the first time, I slowed down.
I asked questions.
I sat with Scripture.
I wrestled with difficult passages.
I learned to say, “I don’t know.”
I learned to stop borrowing convictions and start developing them.
The more I read, the more I realized how much of my life had been built on assumptions.
Assumptions about God.
Assumptions about people.
Assumptions about what faith was supposed to look like.
Again and again, God brought me back to a single question:
“What did I actually say?”
Not what the pastor said.
Not what the prophet said.
Not what tradition said.
Not what culture said.
What did God say?
That question changed everything.
It changed how I read Scripture.
It changed how I viewed leadership.
It changed how I approached healing.
It changed how I understood discipleship.
It changed how I understood church.
Because discipleship is not teaching people to follow us.
Discipleship is teaching people to follow Christ.
The goal was never dependence.
The goal was maturity.
The goal was never control.
The goal was transformation.
The goal was never building followers.
The goal was making disciples.
Slowly, God began rebuilding what religion, deception, and dependency had distorted.
He taught me to test everything.
He taught me to examine every belief.
He taught me to value truth over comfort.
He taught me to seek understanding before agreement.
He taught me how to hear His voice through His Word.
Most importantly, He taught me that intimacy cannot be outsourced.
No pastor can pray enough for me.
No prophet can hear enough for me.
No mentor can obey for me.
No church can build my relationship with God for me.
Those things can help.
They can equip.
They can encourage.
They can point the way.
But they cannot walk with God on my behalf.
That responsibility belongs to me.
Looking back, I understand now that church hurt was never the end of my story.
It was the beginning of a deeper one.
God was not abandoning me.
He was teaching me.
He was not removing people because He wanted me isolated.
He was removing every substitute for intimacy.
He was teaching me how to know Him for myself.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped searching for someone to stand between me and God.
I discovered the invitation that had been there all along.
To come boldly before Him myself.
Not as a spectator.
Not as a follower of followers.
Not as a consumer of spiritual content.
But as His daughter.
And that changed everything.
Reflection Question:
Who am I following, and is that person consistently leading me back to God—or to themselves?
Continue the Journey
Church Hurt Series
Related Reflections
Leave a Reply