sir, are you saying it is wrong to be straight? JJesus was "come and 
see". God is "come and see". I find it terrible if it oght to be 
necessary to be walled in among God's people. I was burned with some 
of that sort of thing in a church too being told by the minister to 
just smile. And i am not advocating wearing one's feelings on one's 
sleeves constantly but if the church is not the place for God's 
people to come and see then I would not know where and how they can 
be. A mentor-friend sometimes quotes a minister saying "act like you 
want to feel and you will feel it" and i hthink there is wisdom to 
those words but I do not believe this always works nor that it ought 
to have to. How is the church, the body of believers, supposed to 
minister to and encourage one another if they each hide behind pasted 
on smiles?

I like the concept of the safe places groups but i have never 
encountered any, not locally anyway. Our room is a little like that 
and that is the one place I feel safe being when I don't feel up to 
par but even there I sometimes clamp up and get stuck inside the Ice Palace.

Cheers,

Doris

At 03:13 PM 5/30/2007 -0600, you wrote:

>Rhonda,
>
>You, unfortunately, made the same mistake I have made more than once in
>churches I attended.  I tried letting people know who I really was, and got
>burned every single time.  One time, the pastor's wife, where I had been for
>13 years, where I had preached, and where I served the Lord, lied about me.
>How do you think I was going to go about convincing her husband, the pastor,
>that his wife was a bold faced, bare faced, liar?  That's right.  I
>couldn't.  She lied about me, regardless, and that was the third time I let
>this pastor into my life intimately in a spiritual sense.  One day, while on
>my knees praying about all of this, and crying my artificial eyes out, I
>realized that three strikes and you are out.  I wrote that pastor off.  I
>still love him to this day.  He is 86 years old and pastoring a new church
>he started 25 miles south of Denver.  I learned more from him than anyone.
>I'd do anything he asked me to do.  I admire him nearly above any man of God
>I know but he will never be my pastor again.  this is why we call our little
>church, Safe Place Fellowship.  On Friday nights, and Sunday mornings, I
>encourage people to speak about exactly how they feel and I don't care what
>it is.  No, you can't do this in a meeting of 3 or 4 hundred people as
>easily, of course, but that is what home groups are for.  If we are that
>large some day, we will still have home groups every night of the week in
>various parts of the city for that very reason, to create a Safe Place for
>people.  No, I am not talking about therapeutic sensitivity group meetings.
>There is only one problem with this.  I keep forgetting I have to be honest
>and reveal my feelings, too.  That's very difficult to do when people
>consider you the shepherd.  Fortunately, I cry easily and it is hard being
>proud when you cry.  I used to hate how easily I cried in front of others
>and about the simplest of things, too, until God said, Jeremiah was known as
>the weeping prophet.  I figured if Jeremiah could be a thumb sucker and God
>used him mightily, that was good enough for me.  Besides, as Lester Rolloff
>used to say, when God squeezes your heart, the juice comes out your eyes.
>
>Phil.
>
>
>
>--
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.1/822 - Release Date: 
>5/28/2007 11:40 AM


-- 
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition. 
Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.8.1/822 - Release Date: 5/28/2007 11:40 AM