Interstate Christianity is like living II Kings without Elisha, but Backroads Christianity is like living in the Book of Acts!
This article is for those who want to exit the superhighways – where Christianity is managed by religious systems, theological philosophers, and overlords – for the backroads, where one can exercise his faith alongside the beautiful living-water streams where God awaits.
God wants to grow our faith by leading us off the beaten path where the multitudes never dare to go. Not all faith is grown within the confines of a conventional stream – what I’m referring to as “interstate Christianity.”
While God has established the local church, many times we have missed the mark about how the local church is to function, strangling the very life out of its members. I was born and raised in a mainstream local church, for which I’m very thankful; but I recognized that something was missing – the kind of faith in life that allowed God to work to the full!
At nineteen years of age, I began to explore the scenery of the winding backroads, where I discovered and experienced faith that I would never have experienced had I continued running in the safety zones.
Little did I realize that years later He would use me to speak back into the mainstream, where multitudes were refreshed from a spiritual perspective that comes as a result of stepping some distance away.
For me, it was much like Moses and his “tent of meeting” in the Wilderness. He didn’t leave the children of Israel completely but went far enough “outside the camp” to meet God away from the clamor of business. There, God showed him what to speak back into the congregation.
I hope you are inspired to know when to drive the superhighway and to exit for the backroads, where faith is sure to come alive! The following represents a few markers along the way.
- When I was 9, I was born again within the confines of interstate Christianity, for which I’m very thankful!
- When I was 19, I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and realized the life of Christ in me was a whole world larger than what I’d ever been told by mainstream thinking. By faith, I exited the interstate for the winding backroads, where I discovered God’s glory like I didn’t know was still available! This was when I really began to enjoy the Living Water that flowed from deep within! I began to see that, while our local church had led me to that Living Water, it could not show me how to translate that into a Living Faith.
- When I was 30, I literally asked myself why I was still working in a secular field rather than pursuing God’s more excellent calling. I was wandering miserably in the “wilderness.” I had worked for others and for myself, but I was never happy with either one. I never could seem to reach even the third rung on the ladder that I sought to climb. I came to the end of myself, at which time He spoke to me and said, “I’ll still use you, if you’ll still go.”
- When I was 39, I took Him at His word and stepped out of the boat onto the water; and Jesus took me by the hand. Again, the Evangelical clergy club in my life at that time did everything they could possibly do to keep me in their exclusive, elusive, two-horsepower boat. I rejected their free shackles to try my faith for walking on water.
- When I was 40, the Red Sea parted and my whole family crossed on dry ground! We moved to a foreign country with $100, didn’t know anyone there, or their language, with no idea of where or how to live, or what to do. We never missed a meal; and within a few short months we were working together, ministering God’s word to hundreds of children in a school in the Andes Mountains. Soon, I was preaching every week in churches throughout Chile!
None of us would trade that faith move for any other profession in the world!
- By the time I reached 50, I had spoken from countless local church pulpits across 4 continents, including underground churches, and taught many thousands of pastor/leaders in citywide/nationwide seminar and conference settings. I was writing articles for a national foreign Christian magazine and was even a guest speaker in seminaries where I didn’t even qualify to be a student!
- When I was 55, I was teaching the simplicity of Christ with emphasis on the Person and work of the Holy Spirit in primetime nationwide TV to the tune of $1500 per half hour. I barely made an appeal for help to pay for the broadcast, not wanting to identify with all the TV preacher schemes, but God supplied for it all His own way! I also was invited to teach on a regional Christian TV network for no charge and all expenses paid – for 2 1/2 years!
- When I was 59, I left trying to speak into mainstream, interstate Christianity for the last time. Most ears are tuned to either traditions of men or post-modern culture, both of which confound God’s ability to get His plain truth into their heads and hearts. Even the Church is experiencing unusual times today, and much more lies ahead.
I went back onto the backroads, teaching and encouraging the many scattered sheep who were without a local shepherd. Most local shepherds have forsaken God’s Word for the doctrines and philosophies of mere religion.
In much the same way, the Apostle Paul was called to the Gentiles primarily, yet he continued to try to convince the Jews of the truth of the Gospel, since they claimed to be looking for Him, until finally he left them for the last time when they ran him out of Jerusalem. Paul was the first of many more like him who have sought relentlessly to change hard religious hearts over the last 20 centuries. He was under house arrest for two years, living in his own rented house for longer than that, where God directed people to come for him to teach.
- I’m about to be 69. Sometimes I feel like I’m under house arrest, no longer traveling and speaking; but the Holy Spirit sends the hungry and thirsty to our door! As the new-normal world unfolds, we may be tested as never before. We are forever grateful that He taught us His way off of the interstate and onto the backroads where His glory seems to shine best!
Your calling will be different from mine, but no less glorious and rewarding… possibly even more so!
Prayerfully consider exiting the high-speed interstates for what I have found to be His best and highest way.
