Wow Robin!
 
Great letter and what a timely post! Linda (McCormic) and I have been sharing these very kinds of things with a prominent Dove lately and I was hoping that this person would know that we were not just making it up or coming from left field or whatever; and you have just proven that what we have been saying is indeed from God. Linda and I do not know you and yet what you have said has confirmed everything that we have been saying. I feel like I could have written your letter myself. By this we know that God is in control of this situation and I rejoice!
 
Also by this, I know that God is shaking His people awake out of their slumbers and wanting them to begin to have the kind of relationship with Him that Jesus died to make possible.
 
To be honest, I quit going to "church" (the organized building kind, not the two or three gathered in Jesus' name kind) many years ago partly because I became tired of the empty sermons such as that which you described. These are "clouds without rain" that are "sensual, having not the Spirit" etc. and I learn more from the Holy spirit directly than I ever could learn from those kind of men's sermons. But to get this ability, I had to be willing to die to myself and become a disciple, as you mention. This is what has been lacking in today's idea of what a Christian is.
 
I mentioned just recently in a post here on Five Doves, about many years ago my being asked not to come back to a church  because among other things, I claimed,  to "hear Jesus' voice" the very way that you describe. Since the pastor there did not hear Jesus' voice, therefore he did not believe that I could and he just thought that I was kookoo or had a demon or something. When I met with him one on one he called me dangerous and a bad influence on his people and said that I did not fit in there etc. Prior to that meeting he had even preached a lesson against me, (not by name but I knew), using Paul's section about members of the body being diverse and he tried to make it say that their church body was rejecting me the way it would a foreign kidney or something. (Funny that Paul's point was exactly the opposite but who's the pastor anyway, Paul or this guy?) But I rejoiced knowing that Jesus had said that His true disciples would be treated exactly as He had been and they would "put you out of their Synagogues etc." That was just one example of the kinds of things that I experienced. I also had family members and former friends and colleagues etc. who put me at arm's length. The cost of discipleship...
 
I believe with your timely message, that God is calling a people out of the midst of the greater assembly to a place of intimacy with Him and those who respond will He receive and those who remain as they are will be ashamed.
 
Love to you sister,
 
Barry Amundsen