The Path to the Right Church

 I often get asked the question, "How do I know what church is the one teaching the truth when there are so many opinions everywhere?" People seem to want some sort of intellectual key to figure it out, and if they don't have it, they get scared and confused as to whether they are in the right church, hearing the right things, living out the truths of God or just religious fictions made up by men. But this is not the path to understanding.

The Bible teaches that the path to the truth is through humility. Not worldly humility where one acts like nothing can be known, as though God is incapable of leading His sheep to green pastures, but biblical humility that evidences that one is teachable to whatever God may have for him. 

Biblical humility is the assumption that one does not know until God, through the ecclesiastically interpreted Word, reveals the truth to him. He does not arrogantly assume his own feelings, experiences, and reason is any sort of measuring stick for what is true and what is not. Isaiah 66:1-2 says,

This is what the LORD says:

“Heaven is My throne,

and earth is My footstool.

What kind of house will you build for Me?

Or where will My place of repose be?

Has not My hand made all these things?

And so they came into being,” declares the LORD.

“This is the one I will look to indwell:

he who is humble and lowly in spirit,

who trembles at My word.

God's Spirit leads the one who is lowly in spirit, who does not lift himself up. But what does this look like? It looks like submitting to church leadership by deeply contemplating its biblical interpretations and not assuming that you know the truth on your own. It looks like seeking to understand from the authorities God has placed over you, even if those authorities might be wrong. It's coming with an open hand rather than a closed fist, an empty cup rather than a full one. That's because being led into the truth isn't about you figuring it out. You are fallen and not able to figure it out. Your flesh won't allow you to do so. It suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. It will not allow you to reason your way there, and God does not honor self-reliance but rather faith and reliance upon Him. It's about God leading you into the truth and God does not lead the rebellious, arrogant man, but the one who seeks Him with all his being and subjects himself to the process of learning through those placed over you. 

Because of this, God may have you in a church that doesn't have all of the right answers for a while. It is how you respond to that church that will show whether your self-assessment of humility is accurate. If you cannot submit to a local church body then you are not humble, and if you are not humble, you are not led by the Spirit into the truth. It's as simple as that. 

It is being teachable to where you are, seeking to learn what you can, questioning yourself and denying yourself within the times and places God has placed you. Many, and I do mean many, fail this test. Every man wants to believe he is teachable but so few are. 

Never would I believe that any of the pastors I was ever under were infallible or knew all the right answers but I sought to learn what I could from the churches I was under. I see the things I see today, not because I was smarter than anyone else but because God led me to see them, and I believe He led me to see them because I didn't assume that I knew already but always sought to understand, submit myself to where I was and under whom I was placed, and never stopped reforming because I wanted to know Him and His life-giving truths more. Always seeking, always asking, always knocking on the doors in front of me rather than always second guessing as to whether they were the right ones. I explored every question put in front of me and sought to listen to every answer that those who had authority to speak uttered to me. Whether they ended up being right or not wasn't the point. The point was to seek the truth from those God put over me rather than disregarding them to find it through my own religious experiences and reason.

My point to all of this is that one will never know enough to know whether he is in the right church. He may be fully convinced in his abilities to know but this is arrogance, and if this is his hope, he should be afraid. 

Instead, one needs to have his full confidence in God, that He is the Shepherd of His flock, and that if His sheep will follow the shepherds He places under Him in humility, no matter how imperfect their theology may be, He will guide them to green pastures. 

You want to know if you are in the right church? How submissive are you to its teaching? How much do you assume your inability to know versus your ability to rely on your own religious experiences, private biblical interpretations, traditions, knowledge, and reason? God casts down those who exalt their own abilities but He exalts the humble who trust in and seek Him with open arms toward those He has placed over them in various times and seasons of their lives. 

The path to the truth is the path of honest questions and a desire to listen to the answers no matter what they may be, but the one who assumes the truth before God has led him into it is lost. So if you want to know whether you are in the right church, do not ask what you need to know in order to evaluate it. Ask, instead, whether you are teachable enough for God to have guided you there.