Small Town Folks

A couple of times this week, a few different people have made some observations about small town folks. Today, these observations were reinforced. It has been said, to me anyways, that people living in small towns can't see beyond their own nose (not in those exact words, but pretty close). I don't mean to bash small town folks. I'm sure that a large part of this is a result of their environment. They talk about what they know, and struggle to see anything outside their realm of knowledge. Now, I'm sure that not every person living in a small town is like this, but this has been my experience recently. The thing that makes me really sad is when this begins to seep into the church. I know that I was once like this - not able to perceive anything outside of my immediate experience. This is why I am so thankful for my time spent in the House of Prayer. We prayed for the complete body of Christ, not just the church or denomination that we aligned ourselves with. My eyes were opened to see that the body of Christ was so much larger and just as valuable as the Assemblies of God (my personal experience). Today I had a conversation with a few ladies who made judgements on a particular missions organization based on how close this ministry aligns itself to the A/G. It seemed that the denominational affiliation of the ministry and whether or not they taught about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was more important than the fact that this ministry has a heart to see the kingdom of God spread throughout the world. To me, this was very unnerving. My skin was literally crawling as I tried to figure out how I could somehow change the subject. God does not live in the box of our denominations or doctrinal beliefs. His thoughts are so much higher than ours. This challenges me to examine my own heart to see how I may have somehow tried to shove God into a box to serve my own agendas. I do pray that God would give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to see Him as He truly is, not just how we perceive Him to be based on our experience.