This document discusses the importance of having a direct relationship with God rather than relying on or limiting one's faith to what church leaders say. It encourages the reader to remember their personal salvation experience and calling from God, rather than being motivated by money or fame. The document warns that church leaders can mislead and asks which leader one needs permission from to obey God. It provides biblical examples of individuals following God's calling over church leaders.

1. No Vicarious Christianity
Don’t limit your relationship with
God to what someone else,
especially a famous church leader, is
saying.

2. Remember the Day of Your Salvation
• Where were you, and what were you doing
before repenting and giving your life to Jesus?
• Who was it that preached Jesus to you?
• How did God lead you in those days into the
Gospel, into the filling of the Holy Spirit?
• What big things has God called you to do?

3. What Motivated You to Love God?
• Was it watching your church
– Lead sinners to salvation
– Heal the sick with signs and wonders
– Send missionaries to unreached peoples
– Feed the hungry
– Give drink to the thirsty
– Clothe the naked
– Even go to foreign lands
and longing for the day God called you to do the same?
or
• Was it helping a preacher build a big church,
looking for more and more money to give?

4. God has given us leaders
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists,
the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service,
so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in
the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become
mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the
waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by
the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.
Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every
respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-15
Where does the Bible say that these 5 leaders are in a local church
building with the pastor as the boss?
There are bishops and elders and deacons appointed to serve, too.
God does appoint some people to help others seeking truth, but the
only substitute for a direct relationship we should accept is Jesus.

5. Which church leader do you need
permission from to obey God’s calling?
Some time later Paul said to Barnabas, “Let us go back
and visit the believers in all the towns where we
preached the word of the Lord and see how they are
doing.” Barnabas wanted to take John, also called Mark,
with them, but Paul did not think it wise to take him,
because he had deserted them in Pamphylia and had not
continued with them in the work. They had such a sharp
disagreement that they parted company. Barnabas took
Mark and sailed for Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and left,
commended by the believers to the grace of the Lord.
Acts 15: 36-40

6. What Christians put up with since the beginning
I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to
Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that
just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow
be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone
comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if
you receive a different spirit from the Spirit you received, or a different gospel
from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. I do not think I
am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.” And when I was with you
and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who
came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being
a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. And no wonder, for
Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his
servants also masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be
what their actions deserve. You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise!
In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or
takes advantage of you or puts on airs or slaps you in the face.
2 Corinthians 11:2-5,9,14-15,19-20

7. What God spoke through Jeremiah is still true today.
Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of
the Lord , the temple of the Lord !”
If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you
do not oppress the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent
blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will
let you live in this place, in the land I gave your ancestors for ever and ever.
But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. While you were
doing all these things, declares the Lord, I spoke to you again and again, but you did
not listen; I called you, but you did not answer. “So do not pray for this people nor
offer any plea or petition for them; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you.
For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give
them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command:
Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I
command you, that it may go well with you. But they did not listen or pay attention;
instead, they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went
backward and not forward. “When you tell them all this, they will not listen to you;
when you call to them, they will not answer. Therefore say to them, ‘This is the nation
that has not obeyed the Lord its God or responded to correction. Truth has perished; it
has vanished from their lips.
Jeremiah 7:4-8,13,16,22-24,27-28

8. Jesus pays attention to us as individuals
When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him,
“Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”
“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under
the fig tree before Philip called you.”
Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of
God; you are the king of Israel.”
Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you
under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.”
John 1:47-50

9. Some church leaders just want money
• How much should you pay a church to go on a
short-term mission trip?
• Why doesn’t the church pay you to go?

10. He Calls Us & He Meets Every Need
Don't live out your Christianity vicariously.
If God called you to do something, do it,
and do it quickly. Don't be content letting
anyone else do your job, and steal your
glory. Don't wait for anyone else's
permission.