Lord, Where's My Church?

"Lord, lead me to a church where I can feel Your presence and the peace of knowing I am where You want me to be.”

This was my prayer for almost a year after I felt led to resign my position in the church I called home for 11 years. Although many others had also left, my heart ached at parting with my church family. During the months that followed, I missed leading the children’s Sunday school assembly, teaching my 40-member women’s Bible class, and serving as church pianist.

When the minister of one church we attended asked me to serve as pianist, I consented. And during the summer I conducted a Vacation Bible School that would not have otherwise happened. But I still felt this was just a temporary stopover so I kept praying.

During the Christmas holidays, my teenage daughter wanted a job. So one day I glanced through the "help wanted" ads in the paper.

One ad caught my eye, a three-liner about a church advertising for an organist. By checking the number listed in the ad with the Yellow Pages, I discovered the church’s name and location. “Where have I heard that name before?” I wondered.

Then I remembered—just the week before, I received a phone call from a friend from our former church. “I have an urgent prayer request, Muriel,” Joyce said. After she shared her request with me and I prayed with her over the phone, I asked her where she and her husband were attending church. It was the church that placed that ad. She also told me of several others from our former church who were also attending there.

Was this God’s answer to my prayers?

I called the church and made an appointment to meet with the music director. I played the organ for the church pianist and him. In the ensuing conversation, I learned more about the church and the music used. I felt even more that this was God’s place for me. And I loved the Hammond electric organ!

The music director asked me to play for the services the following Sunday. What a sense of joy and peace I felt that day. The young pianist and I worked together beautifully. After the evening service the music director told me he would meet with the deacons on Thursday night and call me afterward. I waited, but no call came.

Since Joyce’s husband was a deacon at the church, I called her a few days later and she told me that several other organists had applied. With multiple Christian universities in our city, I didn’t feel there was much hope of getting the position.

Depression hit, but I fought it off with prayer and God’s Word. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding,” I told myself. “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.” This scripture gave me the Lord’s peace.

Joyce told me the committee had to make a decision soon. They needed an organist who could play the King of Kings cantata for the choir’s Christmas program.

On the day before Thanksgiving, I awoke with a cry in my heart: “Oh, Father, I felt Your presence at that church, and joy and peace. How I long for that to be our church!” I felt led to reach for the Bible by my bed. I opened it at random and it fell to Psalm 20. Verses 1 and 4 assured me: “May the Lord answer you when you are in distress…. May He give you the desire of your heart.”

That night at nine o’clock the phone rang. It was the music director offering me the organist position along with a nice salary. Thus I ended Thanksgiving Day with a glad cry of praise and joy to the Lord.

Beginning as organist in December meant a full month of Christmas programs to accompany. It culminated with the glorious King of Kings cantata. We found our church home and it was everything I had prayed for.