The story is all too common. There’s a thriving church with hundreds of members, and a wonderful pastor who preaches stirring sermons every week. The gathering is less like church and more like a revival! People come to get fed and filled. Everything is going great until one day the pastor makes an abrupt announcement after service announcing that he is resigning. The congregation is torn. Some are confused, some cry, others leave with a bottled up rage of anger. The mix of emotions is a fury. Dozens of people take their last step out of the sanctuary with plans never to return. These dozens include many who have no intention of finding another church, and a few others who have no intention of seeking the Lord anymore without their ‘mentor’. These people have committed a colossal mistake, which we all must learn never to make; they’ve relied on someone else to pursue God for them.
Israel was not much unlike these folks we’re talking about. When they felt that Moses, their leader had left them, they turned away from the Lord only to worship idols.
"And the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, and the people gathered themselves to Aaron. And they said to him, Up! Make us gods who shall go before us. For this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." (Exo 32:1)
In other words, their faith was tied into a man. Moses was Israel’s link to God. Moses was the rope by whom they were hanging onto God. As soon as Moses disappeared, they fell to the ground! This is not God’s will. It is never our Father’s will for us to be linked to Him by any person in the middle except His Son, Jesus Christ. We must learn to stand with the Lord alone. If your spiritual walk with God is determined by the availability and maturity of other people, you’re never going to grow. You’ll be drinking milk instead of eating meat. Milk is pre-digested food that someone else had to break down for you. You’re going to be crawling your whole Christian life like a baby and you’ll never be at the spiritual maturity level that God wants you to be at.
Just a side note, this very issue is the major blunder in the Roman Catholic church– it has put other mediators in-between man and Christ (the primary one being the pope). Now you have people going to priests in a confessional looking to them for forgiveness instead of God! You have people attempting to pray to Mary and the apostles when Jesus is the only one that can hear them. It is never God’s will for you to depend on anybody besides Him, or look to anybody but Him and His Son. There should be no one in-between your relationship with Jesus Christ and our Father in Heaven.
Yet even Christians are guilty of this sin – even if it’s not so visible. We tend to rely on parents, pastors, famous Christian writers, preachers, close friends, mentors, spouses, counselors, etc. But many parents raise their children in the faith only to fall away themselves. Pastors fall into adultery. Famous Christian writers and speakers we love to listen to are found to be guilty of swindling money or falling into adultery. Mentors convert to some cult. Spouses get lazy. Close friends forsake the faith and fall into the world. The fact of the matter is that mankind will fail you! We must never rely on other people to determine the quality of our walk with God. If Noah had done this, we would not be here today! But despite everybody else, Noah stood strong with the Lord.
"And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD. These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God." (Gen 6:7-9)
When other people fall down, stand with God. If no one is there to pray for you, pray for yourself. Did you know that no one can pray for you like you can!? If no one is there to counsel you, read the bible yourself. If no one is there to preach to you, preach to yourself. If no one is there to go to church with you, go alone!
Through the years I’ve seen a way to tell the spiritual maturity level of a new believer. If he or she attends a church with another person and that person stops going, will he or she still keep coming? It’s as simple as that. “My friend stopped coming to church because she was bored! I don’t care if I have to sit alone here I’m going to meet the Lord today alone!” I’ll tell you, that kind of attitude shows the spirit of a regenerated soul. That’s the way it should be. You can’t stop God’s children from chasing Him.
We’ve got to learn to walk with God on our own two feet. People aren’t always going to be there to hold our hand. If you haven’t learned it already, man will let you down and your best friends will fail you. Instead, we must grab Jesus’ hand. If your mentor or pastor is holding Jesus’ hand, and you’re holding his hand, then whenever he stumbles you will also stumble!
Fellowship alone with God frequently. Fellowship with other people, but do not depend on their spirituality to preserve your walk with the Lord. Ultimately, if the whole world is on its way to Hell, determine yourself to be the only one who has an ark when the flood comes.