For your information July 25, 2008

Since, It’s been about a year since I began blogging and I have a lot more readers now… (though not many commenters..hint hint ) I thought I would post my life story in cliff note version. So you can know a little about me!

I was born in 1978 to my parents, the first-born child of two. My brother was born 2 ½ years later. My parents were both Christians and were involved in church. My father worked shift work at a mill about 45 minutes away.  My mom worked too, but only when we were asleep or at school. She was around a lot. She was sort of the June Cleaver type, cooking, cleaning and generally involved in our lives.
Most of the memories of my family are of being super involved in church. Our lives were always wrapped around it. They are mostly good memories now.   At one time most of them brought the sting of rejection.  I never felt that I could measure up to what I was supposed to be. Some unattainable and lofty Godliness that I now know is impossible to achieve.  I knew what a mature Christian looked like and I could talk the talk really well. I thought I was one.  I was running frantically trying to look like I had it figured out. At school, I performed too. I was a good student and  a cheerleader.  I made sure everyone knew I was a Christian. I was so judgmental and  hypocritical. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Jesus to the best of my ability (or so I thought)  and I did genuinely want others to know Him.  I just did it out of fear and  did not know what it was like to have  love relationship with the One who created me.  I now know that I did not have the steps in the middle filled in.  What do I mean? Well I did not have a relationship with Christ. I just had empty rituals and jargon. I had the appearance of Godliness but not the power of God. I had a distant, performance-based relationship with Him. I felt that He was constantly disappointed in me. I could never do enough to make Him proud of me…. It took some time to realize this was not the first time I had felt like this.  I had felt like this all my life growing up. I never felt that I could please my parents. I felt that nothing was ever good enough. I had to be the best at everything I did or I was a failure.  I put up a good facade of being a happy, well-adjusted, Christian girl but on the inside, I was miserable. I hated my life and wished I were dead.
I was 11 the first time I thought about suicide.  The thought came to my mind dozens of times a day. Every time I felt angry, hurt or like a failure, I would think about ending my life. I was too afraid of actually killing my self so I began to cut.  I would run razors over my skin until I felt some sort of relief from the emotional pain. Anything to relieve the pressure in my life. I wrote out so many suicide notes that I lost count.  I never told anyone this until later on in life. It was my secret shame, one more area I could not live up to the standard. Who was I to feel this way? I had a good family, I was not the neglected child of divorced parents!!  How could I help others if I could not help myself? I had nothing to give. I was empty and broken.  I tried to bring worth to myself by  performing and looking like I had it all together,  all in the hope that my pain would be healed.  I began thinking that if I got married.  I thought that a husband who loved me unconditionally would heal my pain. I began dating Jon in 1995, The summer before Senior year.  We dated exclusively until we got married in 1998. Within six months of marriage, I began to have suicidal ideas again. I was devastated. I really thought that marriage was going to bring me relief. I came to realize that there was no human who could fill the emptiness in my soul. I had to face the fact that it was not my circumstances that were causing my so much pain. The pain was in me. The problem was me. I joined a seekers group through Living Well Ministries in September 1998.  That small group of women  helped lead me out of the darkness I was living in. I know that God ordained this step in my life and  I am so grateful to my Father in Heaven that He spared my life. Not only did He spare it, He has redeemed it and brought meaning and joy into it. He sent me on a journey to discover why I felt the way I did and taught me how to Love myself and others from the abundance of my heart instead of the emptiness. I now know that Love is a choice. I don’t have to look for love to fill my brokenness, I now love because I know what love is…it has a name and that name is Jesus Christ!
I love my life now. I am even at peace with my past. I am very glad that I lived through the pain I did  because through it I saw the kind of God I serve. Suicide is no longer a thought for me. I am happily married and I love who God created me to be. He has transformed me. I now gladly serve Him because He brought me out of darkness into the light of His love.  I love Him more than anything in this world! I now see a constant thread throughout my life that was Him. He wove together the ugly, dark of my past with the light and beauty of  His love and made a beautiful tapestry!

soul wounds May 21, 2008

lately I have had several folks say things to me like, “if you see me doing anything Codependent, tell me so I can stop” or ” just tell me what verses to memorize to make me better” or “what’s the quick answer to this problem?” We are so quick to look for the easy remedy to a deep problem. We are more concerned with all of the outward appearance of the deep rooted dysfunction then  we are of the real heart issue. We want to make sure we don’t appear controlling instead of dealing with the fact that we are afraid that if we don’t control other people or circumstances, then our own junk will spin out of control. We are afraid of the pain that we will inevitably feel if we really allow the Holy Spirit to expose our soul wounds. To top all of it off, we are impatient and terrified that if we don’t fix it quickly, we will appear unspiritual, crazy or unstable, so we look for a quick fix.
This reminds me of the following verse:

Matthew 23:26-27 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.

The Pharisees were all about the outward appearance but full of all kinds of soulish junk. By soulish, I am referring to the mind, will and emotions. Jesus called them blind, hypocrites, and compared them to stone tombs which housed decaying corpses.

I don’t want to be like the pharisees! The church is full of them. What will it take for us to get real about our own junk? What will it take for use to get honest about our own humanity? Just because we are Christians, does not mean that we are instantly made into a perfect resemblance of Christ! The world surely can (and does) look at the church and see that we have problems, pain and woundedness, why can’t we admit it?

I am sure I sound like I am ranting, and maybe I am a bit, but i get really irritated when I see the fruit of the lie that says “as a Christian, we can’t make human mistakes.” It’s just not true. I am not talking about a life of willful disobedience, i am merely talking about the sinful behaviors that are natural byproducts of a wounded soul. We will only be as spiritually healthy as we are emotionally healthy. We will see everything in life including God and ourself through the lens of our pain, until we deal with it! Don’t be afraid to do what you have to do to get healing in your emotions!

ok, I am done! Comments?

Nothing….My filthy rags. April 9, 2008

There is nothing inside of me that is good. Nothing. All of my best efforts come to nothing. That is where I am at this moment. Now before you think that I am all depressed and down on myself, I will tell you straight up, I am not being a victim. I am however becoming aware of my weakness. I am becoming aware that even my strengths become liabilities when they cause me to trust them instead of God.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when I began to feel that familiar numbness coming back to my spiritual life. Like my spiritual senses were becoming dull. All desire for the things of God was gone. I mean I could not even pretend to want to read my bible…or spend any significant time in prayer. I did not even want to listen to worship music at all. (if you know me, that’s a big deal.) So, I added some old school R&B to my ipod and embraced my spiritual apathy, whole heartedly. Another thing you have to understand about me, I don’t do anything halfway! I am fully in or I am fully out. I had depleted all of my own natural resources. I had nothing left to give anyone.

Last night, the small group (12th grade girls) that I lead came over to the house to discuss the book we are doing. … (experiencing God). I laugh even now at the irony. I am supposed to lead these girls to experience this God, who felt so distant even to me. We had not met together during the last two weeks…(the weeks of my apathy) but were getting caught up last night.

Here is what God did. Our conversations were about recognizing when God is speaking, or doing something, how to not feel so dead spiritually and how to want God. Crazy! Here are these beautiful girls, asking me how to do the very things that I have been avoiding. God spoke through me to them, and in turn reminded me that It’s true, I can’t do anything without Him. I can’t even want Him unless He first plants that desire in me. Even when I am feeling so deadened and disconnected from Him, He is at work, wooing me. I can’t do it. Do you get that?? It’s such a foreign concept in our world, there is no formula, there is NOTHING I can DO to make me want the things of God.

To go a little deeper here, It was my fault that I became disconnected in the first place. See, I tend to get cocky when I am doing “good” spiritually. I tend to coast through life relying on my own wisdom and my own abilities. I know beyond a shadow of doubt that my Father in heaven allowed me to wander far enough away from Him that I felt my need for Him. It reminds me of a time when my own daughter was three years old. She had a problem with wandering off in the grocery store, the mall or wherever we happened to be. Well, one day my husband and I decided she needed to learn that it was not a good idea. So we were in a store and when she wandered off to look at a toy display, we hid from her view. We could see her, but she could not see us. It took a few minutes for it to dawn on her that she was alone. I could see the emotions flickering across her face. When it finally registered that she had walked too far this time,her chin began to quiver and her eyes began to tear up. We came out from our hiding places, which were within two feet from her, and she was both angry and relieved. It may sound like a horrid thing to do, but she never wandered off again after that. I believe that God does the same with me. When I venture off of the path He is on, He just stops and waits for me to realize that I am doing it alone again. He never leaves me, but He just sort of hides Himself. Well, I am obviously a much more stubborn child than my own daughter, I don’t learn so easily. I wander off to look at my own version of toys, which I will plainly call idols. I whore myself out to all sorts of other lovers, self, people pleasing, recognition, pride, television…the list is long.

The good news though, even though I had nothing to give to that small group last night, God showed up. He helped us all to see that even the fact that I was discontent with my lack of desire for God, was the hand of God moving my heart. He showed me this verse this morning:

Among the gods there is none like you, O Lord;
no deeds can compare with yours.

All the nations you have made
will come and worship before you, O Lord;
they will bring glory to your name.

For you are great and do marvelous deeds;
you alone are God.

Teach me your way, O LORD,
and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.

I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever.

For great is your love toward me;
you have delivered me from the depths of the grave.

Among all the gods, there is none like you… among all the idols that I erect in my life, there is none who can compare to Him! None of my “toys” will be able to come close to filling my emptiness. I want an undivided heart, to love Him. I want all the other lovers to fade away in the presence of God Almighty.

Great is HIS LOVE TOWARD ME. not my love toward Him. Even if I were a junkie, in an alley somewhere, His love for me would be the same. It is His faithfulness that will see me through to the end. It’s His loving kindness that will woo me to Him. Thank God, it is not reliant on my desires or lack thereof!

My soul longs for you and nothing else will do. March 13, 2008

A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb, But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.
Proverbs 27:7 NKJV

I was on the phone today with a sales rep, trying to order tickets to a conference I am going to next month. My bible was sitting in my lap, so while I was on hold, I began flipping through it in an absent-minded fashion. The above verse lept out at me.

Do you know someone who just craves attention? This person just needs to have praise, pats on the back and compliments or they just get depressed. What about someone who can’t do anything with out the approval of someone else? Do you know someone in an abusive relationship and you cannot figure out why they stay?

Several posts ago, I wrote about my struggle with busyness. That there were so many good things that were coming my way, that I was having a hard time saying no.  Here is the kicker… I had become so focused on taking the right next step that I had lost sight of my guide, Jesus.  My soul was not satisfied in Him. I was hungry for Him and trying to fill it with the bitter things of the world namely, busyness.

It is the same with that individual who needs to have approval and attention. Their soul is starving for the security and approval from their creator  but instead of finding that in Him, they are seeking it from other humans. The sad truth is this, if you are looking for approval and attention from a human, you will be on a roller coaster of approval addiction. Humans are fickle. Their approval is dependent on your performance. God’s approval is constant and complete. When you are in Him, you already have his approval. Your worth is so deeply secure in Him, that nothing that you could ever do, or not do, could ever change that.

Is your soul hungry or is it satisfied in Him? He is returning for a bride that only has eyes for Him. Seek to find Him and He will satisfy your deepest needs.

Is your soul satisfied in the Lord?

Lazarus, come forth February 7, 2008

John 11:30-44 (the message)
Jesus had not yet entered the town but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When her sympathizing Jewish friends saw Mary run off, they followed her, thinking she was on her way to the tomb to weep there. Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. He said, “Where did you put him?”
“Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.
The Jews said, “Look how deeply he loved him.”
Others among them said, “Well, if he loved him so much, why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”
Then Jesus, the anger again welling up within him, arrived at the tomb. It was a simple cave in the hillside with a slab of stone laid against it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.”
The sister of the dead man, Martha, said, “Master, by this time there’s a stench. He’s been dead four days!”
Jesus looked her in the eye. “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
Then, to the others, “Go ahead, take away the stone.”
They removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, “Father, I’m grateful that you have listened to me. I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I’ve spoken so that they might believe that you sent me.”
Then he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And he came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face.
Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him loose.

Have you ever looked a situation that seemed hopeless? Maybe it is a dream that you thought God had planted in your heart. Maybe a child, sibling, parent or friend who is lost in addiction or they are not walking with Christ. From all appearances, it seems that it is a dead situation. Maybe everyone around, including you have given up hope that it will ever happen. Maybe the person lost in addiction is so far gone that it really is hopeless, so all involved have put the hope into a cave on a hillside and thrown the slab of stone up over the opening. Maybe you are mourning the loss of hope or perhaps you have long sense forgotten about it all together.

What stood out to me in this story is several things: the pain of the sisters, the response of the people and the response of Jesus.
Earlier in the story, Mary and Martha had sent a message to Jesus, informing him of Lazarus’ illness, with the request that Jesus come quickly to heal Him. See, they knew that Jesus had the power to heal him, no question. They knew the person of Jesus in a real way. They had relationship with Him. In verse 5-6 it says that Jesus loved Mary, Lazarus and Martha, yet he stayed in the place He was for two more days. He did not rush out immediately when the need was made known. Actually, he went on with business as usual until He had completed the task He was doing.

When Jesus finally arrives in town, He is first greeted by Martha, shortly followed by Mary. Both women accuse Him in their grief saying, “if you had been here, our brother would not have died!”
Jesus’ response was an angry groan!
Mary, Martha and all the people there at the wake had given up hope on the dead brother. They were mourning the loss. Jesus walks onto the scene and commands them to remove the stone. Martha says the only reasonable thing. Uh, God, Lazarus has been dead for four days…he’s not smelling so good!”
Groaning again, Jesus says, “I told you that you would see the Glory of God, why do you mourn?”

Jesus, prays outloud so that everyone could hear then commands: Lazarus, Come forth!“ Jesus raises the guy from the dead!!
When Lazarus comes out he is still wrapped in grave clothes…bound hands and feet and face still covered with the burial cloth. He would have had to hop, or hobble out because he was so bound up in the trappings of death.

This is huge to me. There are people that I have been praying for, that appear to be lost causes. They seem to be gone too far with no chance of being restored. This story gives me hope. Jesus can bring to life the things that by all appearance seem to be dead.
For that person wrapped in the grave clothes of addiction, they will need someone to help them to unwrap the chords that bind them. They will need help removing the residue of addiction…the habits, the hurts and the hang-ups. But Jesus, can bring them back to life.

That dream that is planted deep within you may appear hopeless. It may seem like it can never happen, but I tell you this, if It is the will of the Father, He will bring it to life again. Remember he continued on with what He was doing for two more days before going to Mary, Martha and Lazarus’ aid. What you may be perceiving as a “no“, may only be a “not yet“ from the Father.

Don’t give up. Don’t bury the hope of seeing that dream come to fruition. Don’t put the stone over the grave of that person running from God into addiction. Look to the Father. Wait for the glory of God to be revealed in the graveyard of your hopes.

Holiness and Compromise October 4, 2007

Here is my promised blog. I have been working the details in my head and in my life. This is the hard copy of the talk I gave to our youth group tonight.

Hope it encourages and challenges you as much as it did me when I was studying for it!

Holiness that hurts the eyes. Holiness in the inward parts, is the fragrance of Christ on our very being. The life of Christ being exhibited in our everyday lives. In this day and age, it is often considered an outdated way of life, not politically correct or maybe intolerant but this is the way we who call ourselves Christians are called to live. We are called to be above reproach. Yes, we are under grace, but that is not an excuse to sin. The grace is there to cover the mistakes that we will make because we are not Jesus. We are mere humans but we are filled with the Holy Spirit of God who lives through us, giving us the ability to live up the challenge!

The first thing that I think we need to look at is pride and humility so that we can get a grasp on an accurate view of both! True humility is seeing yourself as God sees you. Pride obviously is the opposite. It is seeing yourself as either better OR WORSE that God sees you. Low self-esteem, is just pride in drag. Basically it is like saying that you know better than God what worth you really have. You absolutely cannot be a good leader if you are prideful. Pride will lead to ruin every time.

You may be extremely gifted but if you do not have character to match, it’s not of much use to the kingdom of God. Character is who you are when no one else sees. It is your thoughts, motives, attitudes, desires, habits and behaviors. It’s really easy to say all the right things in front of “church friends” but have a heart that is far from God. It’s called hypocrisy.

I want to clarify something. We are not SAVED by works. We are saved by GRACE! However, the bible says that a Christian is known by their love and their fruit! It also says that there will be many people who come before him and say Lord, Lord, I have done many great works in your name, and God will look at them and say depart from me, I never knew you! So it is about being in relationship with Him. Being immersed in Him. Are we so immersed in Christ that it changes the way we live and think?? Someone has to draw a line in the sand and say, even if culture tells me this is how I should live, I must live according to god. So, being saved by grace, does you life look like you are saved by grace??? Do you have godly fruit?

I peter 1:14-18 (the message)
14 So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. 15 But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. 16 For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.”
17 And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time as “foreigners in the land.” 18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver.

God is Holy. In Isaiah 6, when Isaiah saw the glory of God, he fell to the ground and cried out, Woe is me, I am unclean man with unclean lips, I live among unclean people. He was immediately aware of His own sinfulness in the presence of God. Exodus 33:18 Moses asks God to show him His glory. God tells him to hide his face because no man could live if they saw his glory. In the old testament only the high priest entered the Holy place and then only once a year on the day of atonement. Before he entered, a rope was tied around his leg and bells were sown into his clothing. So that if he suddenly died the bells would stop ringing and they other priests could pull him out without violating the law. NO ONE dared approach the Holy Living presence of God with out perfectly fulfilling the law. They would not even write his name. It was too holy. Then when Jesus came in the New testament and fulfilled the law. He became the sacrifice. So the apostles who KNEW the holiness of God‘s law and also knew the grace of the lamb of God.
Now because He already fulfilled the law we can come BOLDLY before him in the holy of holies!!

Let’s look at Pharisees for a minute. Most of the time we think of them as the bad guys, right? Actually they were the conservative, intellectual church leaders who defended the faith as they knew it. All they knew was the law and they had that down pat. The thing that Jesus despised was the pride and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. We must truly understand that UNTIL WE ARE AWARE OF HOW DEPRAVED AND SINFUL WE REALLY ARE AT OUR CORE WE WILL BE NOTHING BUT A CHRISTIAN PHARISEE. HYPOCRITICAL AND SELF-RIGHTEOUS. Purity begins with our determined refusal to hide from the condition of our heart. From this awareness, will come humility and true holiness. A hypocrite is someone who sees their own private sin and makes excuses for it instead being honest with themselves, God and another safe Christian brother or sister and then allowing God to remove it. Our first step in this process of sanctification is seeing and admitting that we are not as holy as we like to think.

To see accurately how we measure up as a Christian, we must put our life up to the life of Jesus. Do we look like him? Do we live a fully unselfish, Never sinning, always intimately connected to God life?? Do I walk in utter humility? Do I live in complete honesty with myself and others at all times? Do I walk in total forgiveness or do I harbor anger or offense against someone?

We are called to holiness. Holiness means totally devoted or dedicated to God, set aside for his special use and set apart from sin and its influence. The bible teaches that our actions flow from what we have going on in our hearts. Outward sin always begins in our heart. That is why as Christians, we must begin to make a habit of searching our heart. (Read: II Cor. 14:5, Psalms 4:4, Psalms 139:23) Ask God to shine the light of His truth on any darkness in our hearts such as wrong motives, pride, anger, un-forgiveness, jealousy, greed, disobedience, or rebellion gossip, criticism. Remember that ears that listen to gossip and criticism are just as guilty as the one who spoke it. You ears are holy, don’t let them come into agreement with the accuser of the brethren, the father of lies! What are you listening to on tv, radio, conversations? Your eyes are Holy too, what are you putting before them? The bible says that our eyes are the lamp to the rest of the body. What are you looking at when you are on your computer late at night? This is not about condemnation, it is about holiness. We are called to be holy. A holy God lives within us, are we aware of that? The bible says that we will reap what we sow, the things we look at the things we listen to, the things we say will plant seeds in our hearts and out of that we will reap. Are you sowing to the flesh, or the spirit? You are doing one or the other at all times! There is no in between! If you are not feeding on Jesus then you are feeding your flesh! What is our flesh? Your flesh is EVERYTHING you think and feel that is not a result of the will of God and His word in you. Holiness is not what you DO it is a product of What you are BEHOLDING. Holiness is abstaining from Idolatry which is putting anything above Christ.. Even if it is a ministry, or a style of worship or what you feel that God has called you to do.

God calls us to be holy because He is holy. Out of respect, out of gratefulness because he saved us. In the old testament he told his people to be holy, to come out from among them and be separate, because he is the lord their God who brought them out of Egypt. Egypt was a place of bondage due to the disobedience of the Israelites. They refused to destroy their idols and God in his love for them allowed them to go into slavery so they could recognize their need for a deliverer! Today, Egypt can be a picture of whatever holds us In bondage. Sin, lust, greed, pride, busyness, partying, drinking, music, hobbies, tv, our cell-phones, our friends, video games, computers, anything that takes precedence over our relationship with God. What dominates our time, what we feel we cannot live without. Maybe it is friendships, or what people think about us that we worry about.

We must remember that it is not about performing good deeds to earn the favor and grace of God! The good works will naturally come from your life when you are in constant relationship with Christ because you will be exhibiting the life of Christ in you!

AACC World Conference September 19, 2007

For those who are curious, the conference was amazing. I am still exhausted and overwhelmed by all that I learned. I have information and statistics coming out of my ears!! I saw Joyce Meyers, Tim Clinton, Larry Crabb, Natalie Grant, Avalon, Michael O’brien, John Ortburg and many many more.

I think the thing that sticks out the most, was this: the World does not need a church full of wounded healers. God wants to heal his bride so that they have something to give. This is my heart. I was walking around bleeding all over the people I was “ministering” to before I began my own healing journey. I am grateful that God placed people in my life to help me to grow into who He wants me to be! I believe He is doing a new thing in the church, he seems to be merging emotional healing programs into the church body! I love it!!

Anyway, i am still processing, and probably will still be for a while! : ) Oh, I did purchase the next course for my Diploma of Biblical counseling…It is called Caring for Teens God’s way. I am very excited about that!

Here is the website of the ministry that I was a part of for my own healing.  It is called living Well Ministries