The Lifted Warrior
Designed for new and young believers in Christ, this weekly podcast equips you with essential spiritual tools to navigate daily struggles and uphold Christian values. Each episode offers practical strategies to strengthen your faith and stay committed to a life fully submitted to Jesus. Join us as we encourage and empower you to stand firm in your walk with Christ.
The Lifted Warrior
Healing from Church Hurt: A Path Forward
The Lifted Warrior podcast makes a powerful return, tackling one of the most pressing issues facing Christianity today: why so many believers are deconstructing their faith and walking away from church communities that once anchored them.
Host Cam dives deep into the reality of church hurt, challenging the dismissive attitudes that often compound the pain of wounded believers. With refreshing honesty, he confronts how many ministry leaders have transformed church into a pyramid scheme where congregants become stepping stones for personal ambition rather than souls to be served. "If we're going to say we're going to deconstruct Christianity," Cam observes, "we have to deconstruct ourselves—our mindsets, our ideologies, our thought processes about what we say we believe."
The episode explores how an incomplete gospel presentation sets believers up for disappointment. Some churches emphasize prosperity without preparation; others focus on suffering without purpose. Neither approach fully equips Christians for the realities of spiritual growth. Through biblical examples like Joseph and David, Cam illustrates how God's promises often include extensive seasons of testing and processing before fulfillment—a crucial understanding many new believers never receive.
The conversation culminates with a challenging question for reflection: "Would the you today be able to effectively reach and save the unsaved you?" This powerful prompt invites listeners to examine whether their spiritual growth has disconnected them from the very people they're called to reach. For anyone struggling with disillusionment in their faith journey or seeking to minister effectively in today's complex spiritual landscape, this episode offers both compassionate understanding and practical wisdom for moving forward with authentic faith.
what's up, guys, and welcome back to the lifted warrior podcast. It's your host, cam. And really quickly, man, anybody who has been listening to the podcast since, um, when we first started this thing back three years ago, um, at this time, man, thank you. Anybody who this is your first time listening to the podcast, thank you, um. Anybody who has been waiting since the last season for me to release something else, hey, we are back, um, and again, I just want to say thank you, guys, so much for taking the time to listen to me. Um, it means a lot to me.
Cam:I don't take it for granted at all, man. You know you can be doing anything with your time, because you decided to spend a little bit of time with your boy, so I appreciate it. Um, now, what I want to kind of do from here on out is I don't know, I don't necessarily know if I'll be doing it seasons or in seasons or seasonal. It's something that I do feel like God is asking me to do more consistently than that, and so pray for your boy, man, pray for, pray for me, pray for what God is showing me with this um, that I can complete the assignment Um. So in the meantime, though we're not in the meantime, but for now, what I want to do is, or what I want to kind of address, is what I was focusing on, or what God had related on my heart, was the fact that we are in an era not as much anymore, but we are still in an era where a lot of people are dealing with different things, that they're hurting from dealing with different things that they believed was going to be the truth for them as it concerns church, as it concerns their role in church and just things not happening the way that they thought it should. And so a lot of people are now in their quote-unquote deconstruction period, or deconstruction of what they believe church should be or what they believe their religion should be. And you know, don't get me wrong, I get it.
Cam:Like I said, it's a lot of people who have been told different things were going to happen for them. It's a lot of people who've been prophesied to and encouraged that they, that other people saw different things happen in their lives or that they will be in a certain place, and some of it is the fact that, you know, those things were just boosting up their ego it wasn't necessarily what God was truly saying to them up their ego. It wasn't necessarily what God was truly saying to them and the other part of it is just people being processed and not understanding what that process means and what that does, not just in them but to them, and how to properly respond to processing Right. And so we have a lot of people who are deconstructing and really just turning away from the faith is what it is. And I had the idea, or I had the thought God really gave me the thought, to be honest, of just really dealing with that. Because if we're going to say we're going to deconstruct anything, we're going to deconstruct Christianity. Or if we're going to deconstruct quote unquote this church, we have to deconstruct ourselves. We have to deconstruct our mindsets, our ideologies, our thought processes about what we say, we believe and where we got that belief from and what that really means to us.
Cam:And it truly is just a lot of people who had their hopes and their dreams and the wrong things, and they weren't really based in the Bible. It was based around the culture of the assembly of church, but it wasn't based in the Bible and what God said about a certain idea or concept. And so you know in this first thing that I really want to deal with is church hurt, because it's definitely something that I believe is real. It's definitely something that I believe a lot of people are dealing with, and that's the reason why a lot of people are just falling away is because they're hurt. They're being hurt from the world. They've been hurt from, you know, lack of seeing things happen in the way that they wanted to see. So they're disappointed. Hope is being delayed, there's a false hope in different things and they're putting their their, their thing, their hope in different things. And now they're hurt.
Cam:And one of the things that is also hurting them is the church. And you know, just even starting this conversation, I believe that a lot of people would be like, well, yeah, they're not really. You know, you're not hurt by the church, you're hurt by people. And if we just look at the biblical definition of what the church is, then the church, if the church is the gathering or the assembly of the believers, and if a believer is a person, and a person who is a self-professing Christian does something that hurts someone who was, who comes to them as a Christian, then you can say that their church hurt, say that their church hurt and I believe for a while or for a long time in the Christian faith, we've been insensitive and lack empathy for people that have been hurt by the body of believers. One of the things that I can think of just off the top of my head that we love to say is that you know, oh well, you know they're just dealing with a spirit of offense or they just wanted a reason to leave the church because, you know, people go to the club and they get offended and they still go back to the club.
Cam:But the more I thought about that, the more God just kind of dealt with me about even that, just that one phrase. It's like I said, it's a lack of empathy because, yeah, people go to the club and they get offended at the club. Where they get hurt at the club they get into fights, x, y, z. But they went to the club expecting a getaway and while they were there they got that. They got that escape from their reality. They got that escape from what they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis. Right, and so if people are coming to the church and they're expecting to be healed, they're expecting that the people that they come across won't hurt them any further than what they're already hurt. And they're not getting that, but instead they're getting hurt Instead the wound that they already had, that wound of rejection, that wound of that wound of not feeling like they're enough, that wound of being ostracized, that wound of not being connected, that wound of being abandoned, whatever it is.
Cam:If that gets further cut by somebody that's in the church or by a minister or somebody of clergy, then you know, say what you want to say. But I believe that that person has full range to say, hey, the church hurt me. And same thing, like if I went to a doctor and I went to the doctor saying, hey, I got this wound and I'm expecting a doctor to help me and the doctor hurts me, I'm not going to go back to that doctor, right, right. So if we start to look at things in that sense and we start to look at the reason why people come to church and, um, you know, wanting to be healed and then coming and being even hurt even more, then we have to be more empathetic with that person, more empathetic with their plot and what they're going through. And you know, just kind of moving the conversation along, I think what we have, what not.
Cam:I think what I've seen and what I have come to know is that there are two things that we as the church have to do, not just as a local assembly, but also as bodies of believers, to be more sensitive to these people. The first thing is that we got to, we have to stop using people as a stepping stone for our own agenda, and what I mean by this is, you know, I haven't been in like the church scene for all my life, like I grew up in church, but I grew up in a small church, so, like the whole connection and networking side of church I'm very new to and I don't like it. Just being frankly, like, completely honest, but what I see is a lot of people, you know, are using the people that are coming to these gatherings, the people that are coming to these conferences, the people that are coming to these churches, as stepping stones for their own agenda. So instead of really being in, really going out and serving these people as a servant of God, as someone who is there to serve the God sheep, as someone who's there to look empathetically or look with compassion upon the people who they are helping, they are looking at people instead as a stepping stone they're looking at okay, how can I effectively show my gifts? How can I effectively show that I am anointed by helping this person? And it's turned into, like you know, for lack of a better word it's turned into a pyramid scheme where, you know, instead of serving, or instead of like the fivefold gifts being the least of them, it's turned into where everybody is fighting to be a pastor, apostle, a prophet, evangelist or teacher in order that they may honestly fulfill their own ego and fulfill their own wounds or heal their own wounds, whatever it is, if they felt rejected.
Cam:A lot of people run to those gifts in order to not feel rejected. If they, you know, if they feel like they were never enough, but they found that in Christ they have this gift that works and that people like it, and that when they flow that you know they get all this attention, they start to use that and instead of using a gift that was given to serve other people, or even, you know, taking that pain that they felt before and saying, okay, cool, I know what it feels like to be rejected, I know what it feels like to be stepped on. So I and that the reason why I'm able to move in this ability or move into this God given anointing is because I know how the people are feeling. No, instead of what they do, they then turn it, and now they they are making the very people that they were sent to save turn it, and now they are making the very people that they were sent to save.
Cam:They're making those people a stepping stone for their quote unquote ministry or for making a name for themselves, and it's really disgusting, just being completely honest, it's really disgusting, it's really nasty and that's a reason why a lot of people, you know, have left the church. That's a reason why a lot of people have decided, you know what, maybe it's not for me and you know I'm not. I'm not of that train one, to be clear. Like I love, I love the local assembly, I love being a part of a church, I love the community that I get.
Cam:But I get why people can feel that way, especially when you know I see it myself that there are a lot of people doing this and you know, instead of like building a name for Jesus, they're building, they're trying to build a name for themselves, um, and focusing on spreading their own name versus spreading the name of Jesus, and the more we do this, the less that we'll see um we'll see people actually being healed, and the more people we'll see get hurt. Um, but if we focus on Jesus instead and focus on lifting up the name of Jesus and spreading his name and making the name of Jesus great versus making our own names great, then we'll see less and less hurt. People will hurt people less, because our focus would be on making sure that their need is met, versus making sure that our name is heard or our voice is heard, and then we'll also begin to witness true discipleship, because we'll be able to help disciple people through their problems. Because if you're actually going and looking at how can I solve this person's issue, how can I help with their pain, how can I introduce them truly to the person that can help them with their pain, then you'll begin to find ways to truly involve discipleship versus, you know, just preaching at people or versus just yelling at people, telling them how sinful they are. Y'all get the point right.
Cam:And then another reason why people, I believe, are being hurt by the church is because we haven't preached a complete gospel. So, like at the top of the podcast I was talking about, you know just how people have put their hopes in different things that aren't necessarily God. They have put their hope in different things that people have spoken to them, and you know, even use the Bible to to exalt, exhort them. Excuse me, um, but haven't given them the full side of it, right? So you know, even just thinking about David, or thinking about Joseph, or you know even Jesus, all of those people that I just named were anointed or pointed out for their assignment way before they ever came into it. Not only that, they went through a long seasons of testing in order to reign. They went through long seasons of processing in order to reign. They went through long seasons of processing, and not just being processed, but remaining true to who God said that they were.
Cam:Even through the processing, I think of the life of Joseph man. This man one is sold by his brothers. Then he goes into Potiphar's house. Potiphar's wife lies on him. Then he goes into prison. Then from prison he finally ascends to be able to step into the fullness of what he initially saw. And so there's a huge process that had to go on. But you only know that process if you're taught the full gospel, if you're not just given a hype pill on Sunday, if you're not just given a reason to shout, but someone's actually sitting with you and discipling you. They're teaching you how to long suffer, they're teaching you how to labor in Christ, they're teaching you how to go through hardships and the trials of life, and they're giving not just a language to it, but they're also giving examples, whether it be from their own life or from the Bible.
Cam:That's something that we also really have to just get back to is preaching the complete gospel, not just the prosperity side of it and also not just the struggle side of it. Because if All you're telling me is that once I give my life to Christ, that I'm going to go through pruning and crushing and and God straining me out of God, straining the sin out of my life, but you don't tell me why he's doing it. You don't tell me that there's greater on the other side of it. You don't tell me that that God desires for me to have life, and life more abundantly, then that also is a incomplete gospel. We need the complete thing. Yes, we need prosperity and we need how to. We need to know how to endure and how to have long suffering and all of those things.
Cam:So we got to combine the two. We can't, we can't this, we can't discard either side of it, because it it conveys a message that is broken and that does not have the power. That is broken and that does not have the power. It does not have the power to heal us completely. Because, the same way I need to be able to go and talk to somebody who has had a good life and tell them how to encourage them on how to deal with the hardships, I need to go to somebody who's had a rough upbringing and be able to tell them that, hey, in Christ, that yes, there is prosperity, that, yes, god wants to prosper you, that he wants you to prosper even as your soul prospers. Right.
Cam:So there needs to be a balance of the gospel. We need all of it. We can't decide that I'm only teaching hellfire and brimstone. We also can't decide that I'm only teaching that if you sow, that you'll go to, you'll be a millionaire. Right, we need everything, and this has caused people to believe that if you sow, that you'll go to, you'll be a millionaire. Right, we need, we need everything, um, and this has caused people to believe that if anything is hard, that they're being punished by God. Not only has it had, not only has it caused that, that, but it's also caused people who are doing well in life to walk away from the faith because they they've been told, if I'm doing well, then I must be selling. So we again, we've, we've created this imbalance on both sides. Excuse me, let me come down. We've created this imbalance on both sides where, you know, some churches say that if you're going through something you must ascend, and where other churches say where, if you, if you got money in a bank, then you're not literally living for God.
Cam:And I can just imagine man, imagine the pain that one person can feel when they are following what their leader is teaching them to the T and instead of seeing growth and success, it seems like everything is falling apart. And on the flip side, you know, imagine following what your leader is teaching you to the T and instead of you know you seeing the refining of God, the refinement of God in your life, you're seeing him continue to bless you and your leader is telling you that, you know, making more money is sinful. Your leader is telling you that progressing into your career path is not of God. Imagine the hurt or imagine the pain that that is when it's like God, I'm following you or I believe I'm following you, but what was happening in my life isn't lining up with what's being preached to me, what's being taught to me, what I'm hearing on a daily basis. Imagine how that can feel for anybody on either side of the coin. Right. And so we were producing hurt, not just from how we interact, but we're also producing hurt by not preaching the full gospel also producing hurt by not preaching the full gospel.
Cam:Okay, so let's, let's, let's push through. Man, I don't want to be too long into this because, um, I can get long winded into this because I really care for God's people, I really care for the sheep, but I don't want to, you know, continue to beat this over, right? So how can we better serve God's people and not continue to go down this path of hurting them? Right? And the first thing that we have to do is we must pray continually for God to soften our hearts, even and especially after salvation, so that we are sensitive to the needs of the people we come in contact with. I think that a lot of people get saved in. You know whether you've been saved for a year, whether you've been saved for five years.
Cam:Whatever you begin to make your life the gospel, you begin to make your experience the gospel. And so when one thing happens in your experience or one thing happens in your life, you now try to make that into a principle, and that principle is really nowhere in the Bible. And the only way around that, so that we're not hurting people or that we're not cutting people or causing more hurt for them, is to continually pray for God to soften our hearts. Because when we do that, when we allow God to soften our hearts, um, because when we do that, when we allow God to soften our hearts and allow him to make us sensitive to the needs of the people that we come in contact with, then we won't use our own lives, but we'll truly just use the Bible. Now I'm not saying that you can't use your life to speak into somebody, because we the word the Bible says we overcome by the blood of the lamb and the word of our testimony, so our testimony is necessary.
Cam:However, when, when our experience is not correctly aligned with what the bible says and we make that a principle or we make that the standard, then for anybody else whose life doesn't meet, that we're gravely, gravely misleading them. So like I can speak for myself, me and my wife, god told us that we were each other's spouse and for me it happened. We were fasting and for three days in a row, every day I woke up. God told me that's your wife. Ok, cool, that's me.
Cam:Now, if I then go and say to any guy that I walk in that come in contact with and they're asking me like man, hey, I really like this girl. You know, I've been praying and asking God about I think she's my wife. But if I make that my experience, the principle or the standard, and say, hey, god got to tell you three days in a row that that's your wife, then I'm hurting that guy because God may not speak to him that way. In fact, god may not speak to him and say that that's his wife at all. Right, but God will trust the, the, the, the, the Holy Spirit that's within him to lead him.
Cam:And so if I make my experience, the, the, if I make my experience the standard and I'm hurting people and I'm also not being sensitive to their needs, I'm not being compassionate for them, um, the second thing that we must do is develop a true heart of service. Um, we got to stop, you know, like I said earlier, like what we kind of made church, this pyramid scheme. We got to really turn our hearts back to the people of God. We got to really turn our hearts one back to God but then really turn our hearts back to helping people, really turn our hearts back to exactly what Jesus told us feed my sheep If you love me. Feed my sheep If you love me. Feed my sheep. Not if you love me, feed my sheep. Not if you love me, you know, make a name for yourself. Not if you love me, you know, make your name great. Not if you love me, whatever, whatever it is that you're trying to do, even even for me, if I can speak for myself. Not if you love me, make this podcast and make this podcast amazing. No, if you love me, feed my sheep, right.
Cam:So, even in the things that I believe that God has told me to do, if I believe God has told me to start this podcast, I have to make sure that when I'm doing it, that I'm feeding people, that I'm giving you the heart of God, that I'm giving you the heart of Christ, right, so that you are drawn back to him and not drawn back to me. Same thing if I'm a preacher and I believe that God is telling me to go to nations and preach the gospel, I have to make sure that when I'm doing this, that I'm not puffing myself up, but I'm really going there in a heart of service. So when I'm going out to these places I'm thinking about what do they need, not what do I want to give. What do they need and can I meet that need right and can I meet that need Right?
Cam:When we get back to service and not building our name or brand, it's going to eliminate people feeling used by the church and man. I hear it a lot, man where people just feel like they're being used. At one point you know I can speak for myself where I may have felt that way, but it's honestly just when you don't feel like you are being Not catered to because that's not necessarily what we're here to do, but when you don't feel like you, what you're doing serves a purpose or that is actually beneficial to the kingdom, then you can feel used and so like when we're, you know, bringing people into our ministries, we're bringing people into our churches and we're just sticking them in places but not feeding them. Um, whether that be through discipleship, whether that be through loving on them just as a brother or sister, whether that be through, um, just gathering outside of church, we're not feeding those people. It can, it can truly feel like they're just being used, um, for the sake of somebody else. So we just got to get back to a heart of service, and as I'm saying this, I'm even speaking to myself. So, you know, just making sure that we're staying in a heart of service, so that the people that we're working with, that we're laboring with, don't feel used by us or feel used when we come around.
Cam:And then the last thing that I'll touch on is that we must be attentive to the concerns and complaints of new converts of the faith. One thing that I've learned from being in business for you know, not being in business, but working in business and working in sales for as long as I have is that, um, when you get a complaint multiple times over, there's typically some truth to that complaint, whether it's something you believe or not. When multiple people are saying the same thing, there's some truth to it. And so we have to listen to new converts when they come over to Christianity, if they're saying they feel like Christians are judgmental. If they say they feel like Christians think they're better than other people. If they say they feel like they don't have a place or they feel like they don't have discipleship, we have to listen to that so that we can be better, not just for them, but better for 10, 15 years down the line, because it's not to say that every complaint is valid. So it's not to say that every complaint is valid. However, it's to say that we are truly concerned with the heart of the believer. It's to say that we're truly concerned with the heart of the body of Christ, which we are part of.
Cam:And we got to actually examine the complaints that we hear a lot of right, which you know. I mentioned some of them here. There's plenty more that y'all probably can think of. But just making sure we stay sensitive, you know, whether that's at your local church, whether that's just at your job with your family, whatever it is just making sure you stay sensitive to different things that people may be saying, especially if it's something that's coming up a lot, and I think that'll help us mitigate the overwhelming concerns or overwhelming people being able to say that they've been hurt by the church or hurt by church people, because don't get me wrong there's people out there who are just I ain't gonna say they're just talking but there are people out there who are not in the best place and they really have ulterior motives. But then there are also some people that are really just hurt from church or from church people, and we got to do a better job of not just dismissing them, not just dismissing what they brought up, but actually digging, actually digging into it and seeing how we can further help, digging into it and seeing how we can further help.
Cam:So, as we close, man, my question for thought for you guys is would the you today be able to effectively reach and save the unsaved you? And the reason why I'm saying that is because I've seen it and I've fallen victim to it myself at one point where we get saved and our method for evangelism, our method for reaching other people, it wouldn't even be able to save us, knowing that it came from us, a level where we're entitled. We get to a level where we think that what we know, everybody should know and we start talking over people's head versus talking to them and meeting them where they are, like Jesus did. So that's some food for thought. Just think over that, man. And if you don't believe that where you are now would be able to reach the unsaved you, let's do some hard work, man. Let's figure out why that is, and I'm willing to bet it kind of starts at the root of putting our focus back on the people that we say we're serving and not putting our focus on building our own name, building our own platform, whatever it may be. But that's it, man.
Cam:I appreciate y'all stopping by. I appreciate y'all stopping by. I appreciate y'all coming and listening to me. I'm not going to say I rambled, because I don't believe I rambled. I believe this was very good for whoever will listen to it and I really just hope that, man, you were able to get something from this, that you were able to be encouraged, be strengthened and able to be lifted in your walk with Christ, man, because that's what it's all about. Man, we know that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty in the spirit to the pulling down of strongholds, and we also know that what we fight against is not flesh and blood, but it's truly the things around us. So I pray that this was able to lift you up. I pray that you're able to continue to fight this good fight and until next time, man, y'all stay lifted, god bless.
