Church on TV

After we left the Pentecostal church, we didnt know where to go. We did what a lot of people do. We stayed home. We still prayed and read our Bibles, but didn't know what to read or how to interpret it. We saw a couple of pastors on a local channel and watched for a while. We read along and even contributed to a couple of them. One was Charles Stanley. He was really good and easy to understand, but he always said that his program was never meant to take the place of the local church. We learned a lot from watching Dr. Stanley.
Some others caused a lot of confusion. There was Ken Copeland and his group. There was also Fred Price. We'd watch Dr. Stanley first and then these guys would come on. A lot of what they said seemed to sound pretty good, but they would take some things out of their context. If you had any problems at all, physical, financial, emotional, or any other kind, then you simply didn't have enough faith. I know this caused me to have doubts about my own salvation. I would pray and ask God to forgive me for doubting and basically asked to me saved again and again. I know it sounds pretty dumb, but this is what I did. I didn't know any better. I didn't really care about my finances or anything like that. I did want to make sure that I had the proper respect for God. I believed He was all powerful and all loving and I still struggled with my own insecurities. I was still trying to fix things. I thought God wanted perfection. I mean He is holy and I'm not, but what I didn't grasp for the longest time was that no one is perfect. No one is able to come to God in his or her own goodness. Those first couple of years, I read through my Bible. I read it a lot. I heard some many different things. One person might say this and another that. I wanted to know what the Bible had to say. I had also heard that Jesus was coming back at such and such a time and a few people even speculated as to where He would arrive. It felt like I was taking 2 or 3 steps forward and then 2 or 3 steps back. It was time to find a regular church.