"Trust and Obey, for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and Obey."

I hate that hymn. If I hear that hymn I know every. single. word. Most hymns are like that for me. Hit me up with a hymn title and I can sing the whole thing, perhaps skipping verse three or four because that was fairly common practice. We only had so much time for hymns after all. It's a pretty little ditty, Trust and Obey, problem is, it's also total crap. 

Here's the lyrics:

1

When we walk with the Lord

  In the light of His Word,

What a glory He sheds on our way;

  While we do His good will,

  He abides with us still,

And with all who will trust and obey.

Chorus (repeated after each verse): 

Trust and obey,

For there’s no other way

To be happy in Jesus,

  But to trust and obey.

2

Not a shadow can rise,

  Not a cloud in the skies,

But His smile quickly drives it away;

  Not a doubt or a fear,

  Not a sigh or a tear,

Can abide while we trust and obey.

3

Not a burden we bear,

  Not a sorrow we share,

But our toil He doth richly repay;

  Not a grief or a loss,

  Not a frown or a cross,

But is blest if we trust and obey.

4

But we never can prove

  The delights of His love,

Until all on the altar we lay;

  For the favor He shows,

  And the joy He bestows,

Are for them who will trust and obey.

5

Then in fellowship sweet

  We will sit at His feet,

Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;

  What He says we will do;

  Where He sends, we will go,

Never fear, only trust and obey.

This hymn reflects perfectly the Baptist principal/doctrine of the "separation of fellowship" from God. They get this doctrine from the misuse of I John 1:6-9. This Baptist site has a short sermonette written out about this doctrine, in case anyone thinks I'm taking something out of context. I'm not.

According to that hymn, If you trust and obey then everything is always peachy keen, jelly bean! No doubts, no fears, no sorrows, no burdens, its all just joy and favor, and sweet SWEET fellowship and abiding with God, while walkin' with Jesus. (Baptists, how is this teaching any different from the heresy of the "name it and claim it" crap that y'all profess to hate so much? This song is basically saying, "do it and get it", right?)

In the Baptist faith, you can't lose your salvation. Once saved, always saved. It's very reassuring, and I happen to still believe that is quite true. It would be arrogant to presume that anything that I can do on this earth would be too great of a sin to make Jesus' death and my acceptance of his gift of salvation null and void. He either died for all of our sins or He didn't. However, since one couldn't lose their salvation once saved, evidence of salvation by external means was paramount. IFB people are excellent "fruit inspectors". 

If you didn't measure up in some way or another (listened to the wrong music, watched the wrong shows, dressed the wrong way, talked the wrong way, etc.) your salvation was often questioned and you would start to have doubts as well. I probably prayed the sinners prayer (also not Biblical, sorry to inform you) a good half dozen or more times growing up before I realized that I didn't have to keep doubting whether or not I really meant it the last time, or the time before, or the time before.

However, the tool that is used to keep you in check is the dangers of separation of fellowship from God. I know that as young as five I was introduced to this principal. It's a horrifying thought.

Here's how it works:

 I saw different variations of the above graphic many times in Sunday School, church, and school.

After you are saved, you have to keep "walking in the light". If you don't, you become "backslidden". Feel free to check out that list, it's a doozy. Being backslidden is like wearing a scarlet letter in the IFB.

As far as I can tell, the whole concept of backsliding is a Baptist one. I've been in a  few different churches over the last fourteen years since I left the IFB and I've never heard this phrase, or the concept of a literal separation from God caused by our own sins once a Christian expressed in other denominations.

Anyhow, once saved, if you sin according to the IFB, every sin that you commit fills up space between you and God, until God turns his face from you and doesn't hear you anymore. So if you are backsliding, not walking in the light, or in any other way sinning, what you are doing prevents God from hearing you.

Isaiah 59:2 says this:

 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. 

And Romans 3:23:

For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God

However, Isaiah wasn't written specifically for Christians. It's speaking to the Jewish people, in that time period. It's a book composed mainly of prophecy and warnings to the Jewish people. The Jews were going through some pretty tough times and apparently they weren't living morally when Isaiah was doing his prophet thing. Isaiah is warning the Jewish people to repent because they have become so wicked that they can't see God anymore, and as a result, He can't hear them (Basically God is like, "You've moved so far away that you won't even look at me? Fine, then I won't listen to your whining!"). A lot of Old Testament verses aren't really meant to be used for Christians. They weren't written down for us, they were written down for our Jewish friends. They tell us where our roots were, and how the Jewish people succeeded and how they failed. They foretell of the coming Messiah. They are a fascinating religious history. But a good portion of the Old Testament, doesn't pertain to us believers directly. Some of it does, and is relevant. But this verse? In this manner? Doesn't pertain to us. Before you get mad at me for saying that, if verse two applies to us, then shouldn't the whole chapter? Yes? How about verse 5:

They hatch cockatrice' eggs, and weave the spider's web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

I hate when my cockatrice' eggs hatch while I weave a spider's web and then I eat the egg and die and fall on another egg and instead of a cockatrice I get a viper, don't you?  No? Can't relate? That's because you're not an Old Testament Jew. It was probably a metaphor for something else entirely (after all, cockatrice's aren't even real) and because I'm not an Old Testament Jew now it reads like a bad acid trip or a Magic the Gathering Card.

Never mind...

The Romans verse? You got me, I don't get why it's used here at all for believers. But it often was. If anything, it just acknowledges that that we can't do anything in and of ourselves to meet up to what is God's glory.

This faulty doctrine lead me to believe, especially during my years being sexually abused by Doc, that God wasn't answering my prayers because I was doing something wrong. Whatever I was doing wrong was preventing God from hearing my cries. He wasn't listening, because I was sinning too much.

Now this graphic, this one is correct. Once we have accepted the gift of Salvation, Jesus becomes our intercessor between us and God the father. God's grace is sufficient. We cannot undue that relationship by anything we do, ever. It's like the old saying, "If you feel far from God, guess who moved?" Hint: It wasn't God. But even if we have moved away from God, once we are saved, God will always hear us. He may not always answer, or may not answer in the way that we want Him to, but He is always there to listen. He always loves us. Fallen, imperfect us. In fact, the more you are broken, the more you are fallen, the more He extends His grace and mercy upon you. And once you are saved, through Jesus, you have a direct line to God, you don't need any other person to deliver your prayers or confessions to Him.

Romans 8:

37Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now, the New Testament does outline a few situations where God might not answer your prayers:

Matthew 6:5-6King James Version (KJV) 5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Luke 18:11-14King James Version (KJV)11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

James 4:3King James Version (KJV) 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

But that doesn't say that God doesn't hear them praying, just that He doesn't answer them.

The horrible doctrine of "separation from God" that I heard so much about, was extremely harmful to me, and to others. One of the problems with it is that at some point, you are bound to give up. I ended up reaching that point. There was no way I was ever going to be perfect enough for God to keep listening to me, and although the IFB preached a lot about salvation not being works based (which it is not works based, I agree), It espoused this doctrine and fostered a constant feeling of inadequacy and worthlessness. So for myself, I got to a point where I was like, "I'm never going to be good enough and I can't lose my salvation, so why bother?"

You know what hymn I love? Amazing Grace. We sang this in church too of course. But I love it because it is about God's grace. And that grace, it's sufficient for me. It is so healing above and beyond what I can express. Yes, I picked Elvis' version if you clicked on the link. 

Why? 

Because Elvis. 

No explanation really needed. 

Ok, maybe one is needed. You see, there was no Elvis Presley allowed in my household. No Elvis music and no Elvis movies. I remember well how vilified Elvis and all things rock n' roll, even classic rock were made out to be in our churches. I even remember preachers preaching about the evils of Rock music and bringing up how sinful and sensual Elvis was. In the 1980's and 1990's! Elvis was the beginning of the end of America's great christian morality according to IFB sources. My father explained to me once that Elvis was so bad a person that his first TV appearance was censored, that they would only show him from the waist up. My Dad genuinely believed that censoring him was called for and appropriate. Elvis' hips were sinful. They might cause women and girls to lust and think impurely or to want to have sex. Can't have that, now can we?

Just a couple of months ago, I watched my first Elvis movie, Jailhouse Rock, all the way through. Yes, a few months ago, I finally got to the point, after all these years, that I could watch and listen to the King of Rock 'N Roll without feeling like I was doing something evil. I'm not sure why I've had this Elvis guilt thing for so long, I've certainly been listening to secular music for long enough that it shouldn't have effected me but it did.

I also watched Bye Bye Birdie, another movie I had been forbidden to watch. Amazingly I did not slip into sin while watching either movie. I wasn't overcome with lust. I didn't feel separated from God at all. Both were really quite tame, I'm disappointed to report. I was hoping for some sort of lecherous descent into hopeless debauchery but it didn't happen.

Maybe, if I pick someone truly depraved who is singing Amazing Grace, maybe then I will figure out how rock singers are inherently evil and can, by their very existence, cause music to lose it's morals and message. Risky...my soul just might catch fire. Oh well, I will chance it. Ah, here's a great example, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, singing Amazing Grace. He'll be perfect because I heard sermons about how bad hard rock was and I know that band was mentioned by name. I think they were all demon possessed and beat puppies? I'll take a listen.

Danggit, he pretty much nailed it. And that sister, she is gifted! I still l felt moved, my eyes got a bit misty even. I guess maybe, just maybe, the truth of God's grace is more powerful than man after all.

I'm not on fire either. Disappointing. Guess I will just have to keep trying.