From the Wilderness to the Ancient Path

My Long Journey into the Kingdom

God’s grace is good. Despite my running from Him he called me home.

He opened my eyes to the real world and exposed the hollow promises of the materialist one. He reveals my sins to me so that I can repent and seek His kingdom. This awakening was only the beginning.

Once my eyes were open, I saw the fallen world clearly. I realized my desperate need for the Kingdom of God. I was in the wilderness. A stranger in a strange land. Surrounded by noise. Surrounded by the passions that promise everything and deliver nothing but chains.

Christ called me to follow Him. To repent. To seek first His Kingdom.

I had trusted in “faith alone” and bought the great lie of “once saved, always saved.” Life rolled on. Family grew. Work demanded. The world crowded in. We tested churches here and there, hoping for solid ground. What we found instead was often lacking::

• Loveless communities.

• Sunday service only, communities.

• Churches that barely knew the Bible.

• Communities that focus on appearance.

• Fire and brimstone; don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t have a life.

• Churches that couldn’t help with work, life, or much of anything.

• Communities that weren’t even clear about knowing when life begins.

• Sermons that felt like motivational speakers surrounded by pop bands.

• Houses of “worship” that couldn’t tell the difference between a man or a woman.

We got occasional baby’s milk. Prayers in times of pain. Guidance from “Our Daily Bread.” But I was starving in the wilderness, and church felt as noisy as the world outside.

The worst advice I ever heard, and to my shame, repeated to my own wife when she rightly questioned the lack of spiritual nourishment, was this: “Stop going to church looking to be fed.”

I told her, as so many “good Christians” do, that our job is to support the church. How backwards. How out of order. We don’t exist for the church; the Church exists to feed, clothe, heal, and shepherd mankind with the life of Christ. We are first called to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, then to care for our families.

In my blindness, I missed my wife’s hunger and my own. We kept searching for a hospital for sinners, but found few shepherds truly called to “feed Christ’s flock” as the Lord commanded Peter, and was passed down through the ages, with nothing less than Christ’s own Blood and life.

No wonder this generation rejects the church. In America, there’s a different one on every street corner, yet most are:

Not unified through time.

   Not shepherding people to holiness.

      Not universally joined, militant and victorious.

         Not bearing the physical and spiritual apostolic faith.

The data backs up the despair many feel. Church attendance has dropped sharply: down to weekly attendance in the 20% range today. Among young adults, the drop-out is stark. Reasons pile up: judgmental hypocrisy, lack of connection, disagreement on social issues, shallow experiences, churches seeming overprotective or antagonistic to reality. Young women especially are walking away in unprecedented numbers. The modern church often feeds performance, not souls.

Though I kept stumbling, I kept seeking the one, holy, universal (catholic), and apostolic Church: unified through time, shepherding toward holiness, militant and victorious, rooted in apostolic faith and practice.

I kept getting back up.

I know it’s tough. Our time in the wilderness is matters. We all should struggle as we seek first the Kigdom of God and His righteousness.

We will be tested. Offered the world, its pleasures, distractions, noise to drown out our sorrows. We will stumble. We will fall. Only Christ was able to struggle in the wilderness without falling.

Here is the lesson: God is producing an eternal weight of glory in you (2 Corinthians 4:17), but only if you endure to the end. Keep getting back up. When you stumble, when you fall, get back up.

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you (Ephesians 5:14).

Seek first His Kingdom. Look for those called to feed His sheep with truth, not trends. Find a hospital for sinners that turns them into saints through the sacraments, the fathers, the ancient disciplines. There you will find the Kingdom taking shape, not in noise, but in quiet, enduring presence.

This is how you build something that outlives you: by rooting yourself in the ancient faith that has fed souls for thousands of years. By leading your family to the true hospital. By becoming the man who guards his heart and stewards his household toward eternity.

Some of you feel the ache right now. That’s good. It means you’re alive to the hunger. Pray for those still lost in the noise. Pray for the shepherds who have forgotten how to feed. The Holy Spirit does the real work.

If you’re ready to stop wandering and start building on solid ground, join me at Truth & Prosperity. We walk this path together; faith that feeds, family that thrives, legacy that endures.

Let’s rise. Christ is shining.

Thanks for reading this installment in my journey home. Tell me about your struggles seeking the Kingdom, like, and share this article.

Next: What is the shape of the kingdom?