{"id":1260,"date":"2012-10-17T13:04:04","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T17:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/?p=1260"},"modified":"2012-10-17T13:29:01","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T17:29:01","slug":"he-said-he-wanted-to-kill-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/?p=1260","title":{"rendered":"He said He wanted to Kill Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I decided to go to church for prayer service. Before I was married and had kids, I lived at Times Square Church. I was there every Tuesday and Friday night and all day Sunday. I even served on the choir before someone told me they wanted to kill me.<\/p>\n

I never told a soul. I just stepped down quietly from the choir. I mean, who in their right mind was going to stay in the choir after that? Maybe I should have stayed, but deep down, I was disillusioned.<\/p>\n

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Courtesy of Creative Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

Early one Sunday morning, I was praying alone in the choir section when I sensed a presence. I opened my eyes to find a tall male standing before me. I recognized him, he was in his choir robe like me. He said he needed to ask my forgiveness. I asked him for what (since I never had any dealings with him). He said for wanting to kill me.<\/p>\n

I think I was traumatized at that moment because all I said was, I forgive you. I can\u2019t believe that\u2019s all I said.<\/p>\n

Why couldn\u2019t I have told him, \u201cHey dude, what did I ever do to you to warrant your wanting to kill me?\u201d I mean, wouldn\u2019t that have been more normal?<\/p>\n

Eighteen years later, I think back and wish I would have had enough courage to ask him why.<\/p>\n

I went through a whole gamut of emotions and questions. All I was doing was praying. Aren\u2019t you suppose to feel safe in church? I did not feel safe at all. I actually never looked at church the same way again.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong, I love Times Square Church greatly. It is where God brought me, put me, planted me and where I grew up in the faith. It is where I first experienced the presence of God. The preaching is phenomenal and I\u2019ve made great friends there. Many who are now leaders or serving overseas as full time missionaries.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the church\u2019s fault, it\u2019s not anyone\u2019s fault. However, last night, memories began to flood my mind and emotions began to well up. Yes, I forgive this man, wherever he is. The irony of it all is that I didn\u2019t even know his name. But his face will be forever etched in my memory.<\/p>\n

Conceptually, I understood at twenty-seven that evil was using this man as a host. But it\u2019s still hard to grasp something like this magnitude, especially since it happened in church by a supposed brother in Christ. I couldn\u2019t understand it, still don\u2019t and perhaps I never will.<\/p>\n

However, since then, I no longer close my eyes when I pray in church. I do for second or two, but then I open them again. I only pray with abandon when I\u2019m alone and in the confines of my home.<\/p>\n

I wonder if anyone else has had a similar experience in church?\u00a0 If so, please share. I would love to know I\u2019m not alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I decided to go to church for prayer service. Before I was married and had kids, I lived at Times Square Church. I was there every Tuesday and Friday night and all day Sunday. I even served on the choir before someone told me they wanted to kill me. I never told a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[10,8,7,11,85,93],"tags":[56,175,1222,1223,97,174,1225,173,39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1260"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1264,"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions\/1264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ordinaryservant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}