Sister Nancy,
You made many excellent points in this email. I won't attempt to address
them point by point because I agree with every thing you said.
To answer specifically if I seek out fellowship with other believers, the
answer is yes. I also belong to a wonderful church called Sovereign Grace
Baptist Church. I have been an active member since about 1985 or 1986.
When I left Cobu, I was in the process of backsliding. For about 4 years I
basically turned off to God completely. I lived as if He didn't exist.I
lived as an unsaved person. I think now that God was using that time to
somewhat fade out the teachings of ST in my mind. God continued to watch
over me all during that time and I have many stories of His long suffering
and Grace towards me while I counted Him my enemy. When I left Cobu I was
very angry at God because I believed He had failed in answering a promise
that I was convinced He had made me in a sort of semi-audible way. I was in
love with a sister, as you know, and had done much praying about the whole
thing. Before the whole thing crumbled before my eyes, I was praying one day
and the verse "Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of
your heart" became "Take delight in Me and I will give you the desires of
your heart." I heard it audibly in my head and when I did, I sat up straight
and said in amazement, "Where did that come from?" If you know me, I am not
one who asks for or expects signs from God (though on rare occasions I have
prayed for them) as a daily way of life. Then, everything began to fall
apart for me. (God showed me years later that I was using her as an idol and
hoping in that relationship more than Him).
I know now that God used all of that misery I went through to help remove me
from Cobu and the false teaching. Who knows, if I had gotten what I wanted I
might still be there with the others.
God tricked me into going back to church by getting me there through a friend's
wedding ( I was still backslidden at the time and the last place I wanted to
be was in a church.) This was the church I started going to when the Lord
revived my heart to come back to Him a year later.
As for thinking that no other Christians could possibly understand what I
had been through, I believe a lot of that thinking is part of the myth that ST
created in his "leaven teaching". He tried to build a wall around us to keep
us in by extreme manipulative deceit and down right lying. For myself, the
'all consuming importance' of finding someone to understand what I had been
through became less important as God began to open the Scriptures to me. Along
the way, I met and have continued to meet Godly men who not only understood
many of the things I went  through but could point out in Scripture the truth
behind those things. One of the most powerful tricks of the Enemy of our
souls is to isolate us in our thinking. He tricks us into thinking that we
are in a situation or circumstance that no one else has ever gone through or
could understand. But even if that were true, God DOES, understand it all
and knows how to sympathize with our weaknesses, and how to sustain us.
My church has about 40 to 50 people that attend regularly. The Archer
family, (4) came directly out of our congregation and are now in Rumania. We
also support other missionaries to Columbia by way of Brazil (Columbia won't
let them back in-many political and guerilla problems). Another missionary
we support has planted churches in Papua, New Guinea and is also working in
Mexico just south of Brownsville, Texas. Last week, about 7 young people
from our congregation, mostly teenagers, just got back from a 9400 mile
trip(they drove by themselves in a van) that took them to that mission field
in Mexico. Two of the boys (young men) told me that the temperature was
about 106 degrees while they were shoveling dirt. The Mexican pastor
couldn't believe Americans would shovel dirt-he thought Americans would
think it was beneath them.
God be praised for all he is doing in our churches. God be praised for what
He is doing in the church He has placed me in.
Sometimes I fill in for Tuesday night prayer meeting. We have been without a
pastor a couple of times and so the men have had to do the teaching duties
that a pastor normally does. God upheld us during those times in a marvelous
way.
I firmly believe Scripture teaches that church life is not an option.
We have a wonderful pastor and his wife, Roger and Jan King. We have a
sister church by the same name in another town. Our pastor has to race from
the first service at our sister church and drive about 45 minutes to our
church to preach at 11:15am.
Anyway, those are some of the things that are going on in my church. For
those of you who don't have a church yet, please keep looking. God does call
us to worship with other believers. In fact, I think it is commanded. But
His commands are not burdensome. You have no idea how much blessing you will
receive or how much blessing you will give by this simple act of being part
of a healthy church. And you will also find out that you are not as odd as
you think you are.
Brothers and sisters, ST's false teaching tainted all aspects of our
understanding of God's Word. As a reaction against that we have all, in one
way or another, turned away from good teachings in Scripture to try to do
things in an isolated setting just because of our bad experiences left over
from our Cobu days. I know that God can restore what this "locust teacher"
has eaten. He has done it for me and for many others on this site.
Yours in Christ,
Sola Scriptura,
Steve