I wouldn’t say I was addicted. I never had to go to rehab or to the hospital for overdose treatment, but I just really liked the way it made me feel. It was a feeling I didn’t get to experience much. Powerful. Confident. Happy. I just wanted to feel happy.

Happiness came with an expensive price tag, too expensive for my high school allowance to afford often enough. I was feeling so empty and hopeless this particular day. I wondered how I was going to pay for a couple lines of this drug that had the power to give me what my parent’s little church on the corner couldn’t. I knew it wouldn’t last. Even if by morning I was more angry, more alone and more hopeless than before, it would be worth a few hours with this powdery substance.

What did I have to give that a drug dealer might want besides money? And then I knew what I had to do. I will never forget the look of disappointment on my best friend’s face when I took the dealer upstairs. I had stooped to a new low, even for a couple of users. I was disappointed in myself. I felt dirty.

Driving home from work only a few years later, I was a completely different person. Dressed in an outfit that looked like something my mom would wear, I cranked up my Christian music and headed quickly to church. I was now a leader and felt proud that these kids looked up to me. I didn’t really want them to know the person I once was. I liked that they seemed to think I was perfect.  In a way it made me feel powerful, confident and happy.  I wanted to teach these girls how to act like me … the NEW me.

Something almost ugly would rise up in me and splash out of my mouth like a toilet overflowing all over the beautiful bathroom rugs when I saw behavior in them that was familiar to me. Old wounds would suddenly come alive again. Didn’t they get it?! When you change your outward appearance you change the way everyone views you! Say the right things, abstain from the wrong things–at least demonstrate in the way you present yourself to others a little self respect, even if you don’t feel it on the inside.

Was this passion to see girls live pure coming from a place of love in my heart to see them living whole, free lives where they know they are beautiful and loved? Or was it fear that compelled me to aggressively defend my choice not to date? Was this choice that I pushed on others as the ONLY way coming from my fear that they would make the same bad choices that I had made?

So many of these kids found temporary refuge from their troubles in sexual relationships and substance abuse in spite of my efforts to offer hope. But what hope had I really been offering them? I lived my life for too many years preaching a “good news” message that was impossible. In fact it was in direct opposition to the good news gospel that Jesus preached.

It wasn’t like I was suggesting that anyone live a holier life than I was already living.  If I could abstain from TV, R-rated movies, four letter words (with the occasional slip up) extra marital sex, alcoholic drinks, of COURSE drugs, secular music, running to the doctor to fix me instead of to God; if I could read my Bible and pray everyday, plan to homeschool my kids, drive the speed limit, show up to church every time the door was open, breast feed, serve at my church and cover my shoulders ALWAYS, then anybody could do it too!

I had a great argument proving how each of these standards I held to were not only beneficial, but a sign of maturity in the Lord.  But sometimes when no one was around and it was just me and God, I felt empty. This holiness I felt I had achieved didn’t wash me, and I still felt dirty.

Having exchanged my shame for a righteousness that the Bible refers to as “filthy rags,” I was like the apostle Paul, only in reverse. He had once been a zealous religious leader opposing Jesus’ teachings. He was sincerely passionate in his pursuit to purify the church, until Jesus revealed Himself as God and struck Paul (then called Saul) blind so that he could see how he had been persecuting the God he was so zealous to serve.

Paul had a powerful conversion (including a name change) where every ounce of his passion was now channeled through his love for Jesus. He gave up his life to preach the same Good News of grace and God’s kingdom that Jesus had preached before He was crucified.  Sadly, Paul’s biggest battle was with people like me who were saved by God’s grace but then turned to the Law for their righteousness. Gal. 1:6, and Gal. 2:19AMP, “For I through the Law [under the operation of the curse of the Law] have [in Christ's death for me] myself died to the Law and all the Law’s demands upon me, so that I may [henceforth] live to and for God.” (I suggest reading ALL of Galatians.)

My problem was simple: a common mistake or twist of the truth made by many others just like me. I exchanged my shame for the righteousness of Christ because of what Jesus did for me. I knew I didn’t have the power to fix myself, so I submitted my life to God.  But somewhere along the line I got mixed up. I stopped pursuing Jesus’ heart and started thinking I could be better, more loved by God if I read the Bible more. Abstinence from more “worldly” things could make me better than someone else. A life spent surrounded by people who agreed with me would make me more powerful and keep my children from ever falling away from God.  These were MY reasons and motives for living this way and they are WRONG. So if you have personal convictions to raise your kids a certain way, or to refrain from movies or TV, for example, then that is freedom for you. Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying and fall into offense. I am addressing our hearts motivations as we obey God and love others for who they are in God.

Matthew 22:34-40 NKJ, “But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. ’This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Pharisees were devout in their faith in God. They were the religious leaders of their time and believed wholeheartedly in the same God that we believe in. They weren’t a cult. But when Jesus came, He stirred up the traditions that the church was used to in order to breathe life back into it. Every tradition laid out in the Old Testament had a powerful purpose to remind the people of God’s attributes and to point to the coming Messiah.  But, tradition for the sake of tradition is dead. Doing all the “right” things without the heart behind it produces pride, and the Bible says that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. Pharisees in the Bible took it a step further by adding to the law as defined by them. They had theological debates about the greatest commandment and felt very proud to win these arguments.

But of course WE don’t see any of THAT in our modern church body, or do we?

I see in my story how emptiness was what drove me to sleep with a dealer to get drugs and emptiness made me think to myself, “what do I have to repay God for all that He has done for me?” I had nothing except a vain idea for holiness and perfection as defined by me. I was a modern day Pharisee living in opposition to the true gospel of Jesus. My judgments served as a kind of persecution of Jesus. My heart sinks when I think of how many I confused with a message that we are saved by grace while trying to “fix” what people looked like on the outside before the Holy Spirit had a chance to really get a hold of their heart. How many walked away from God because they could never feel good enough? How many are still in church, looking the part, but feeling lifeless inside without a sincere love for God because I never introduced them to His unconditional love? They fear falling out of favor with Him. They fear losing their salvation. I didn’t offer them hope. I taught them an impossible gospel.

Through my personal Saul-to-Paul conversion, God has shown me that spiritual maturity isn’t doing all the “right” things and abstaining from what someone else defines as sin. It isn’t even laying hands on the sick and seeing them recover. Spiritual maturity is a sincere love for God while also demonstrating His unconditional love for others. The gospel that Jesus offered while He walked the earth expressed perfectly love and acceptance for people just the way they were. Now that’s GOOD NEWS!

My hope is that we will each examine our own hearts on every one of our “pet peeves”, “personal convictions”, and “spiritual passions” in light of the kind of love God has extended to each of us personally. His love sees us as He sees His Son, perfect and lacking nothing. I pray that we will see ourselves through God’s perfect love and that we would have eyes to see others in the same way as well.

The Good News is a gospel of GRACE.

The Law I am under is LOVE.

Pharisees can’t define Holiness. It can only be seen in Jesus, recognized through His eyes and achieved by God’s grace through the Blood.

Maybe your life has looked very different than mine. You grew up doing all the “right” things. Grace is a hard concept for you to understand because your conversion didn’t make you look that different from the outside. Maybe you even struggle sometimes, feeling like you don’t have a powerful testimony compared to people like me. I assure you that if you ask God to give you a revelation of what it cost Jesus for your salvation, He will! And grace will suddenly take on a new meaning in your life as you share your testimony powerfully and confidently.

Bless you friends in the perfect love of God!

Some great resources you need to take time to read:

http://bobhamp.com/blog-posts/the-knowledge-of-good/

http://bobhamp.com/blog-posts/that-tree-will-kill-you/

There are good marriages and there are thriving marriages. It’s the difference between eating Hershey chocolate and fine European chocolate. The first is inexpensive and fairly satisfying, but the fine chocolate will cost you more and nothing will ever satisfy in the same way again.

My marriage was kind of like eating Hershey chocolate. There wasn’t anything wrong with it. Overall it was good. I felt in times past that some of my needs weren’t being meant but by this point in my life I didn’t need anything from my husband because I had pursued God’s heart with everything in me and God filled me up. My Lord whispered sweetly to me everyday. He comforted me in my distress, advised me in every area of my life and, can I just say, I found Him to be THE most romantic Lover of my heart.

Well, one morning the Lord turned my attention towards my husband and the disconnect between us. I couldn’t remember the last time I had shared my heart with my spouse. God was just easier and I trusted Him. I could remember sharing with my husband and being frustrated when he didn’t get me, or disagreed with me. Why argue? Why waste precious energy when I had three boys to keep up with? But God spoke clearly to my heart and said, “ I want you to pursue your husband’s heart the way you have pursued mine.”

One night I asked Travis seemingly abruptly why he wasn’t passionate for me anymore. There was no spark in his eye for me and sometimes I wondered if he even noticed me.

He paused for a moment from what he was working on and I was surprised to see that he was really thinking about his answer. “ It’s hard to be passionate about anything when you’re not passionate about the Lord” he said matter of factly.

Meanwhile, I am growing in leadership at our church and more passionate for God than ever. While meeting with a mentor for lunch, a lady who has encouraged me with some very targeted words from the Lord in the past, said, “Rebecca, I see you as a Joyce Meyer and your husband just like Joyce’s husband who comes along side his wife and supports HER ministry”.

WAIT A MINUTE!! I knew who my husband was, not as he is now, but who he use to be before he was wounded in ministry. His zeal for evangelism literally scared me sometimes. Her words shook me and looking back I can see how they truly were from the Lord just not in the way she would have thought. I ran back to God to chat more about that pursuing my husband’s heart stuff.

I grieved and cried bitterly to the Lord for my mate. I told God that I was unwilling to move forward in ministry without him. I reminded God that not only had He ordained my husband to be my spiritual leader, but that he had raised him up from his youth to be a leader. For the first time, I got angry for all that the enemy had stolen from my husband. The devil had stolen the passionate man I married and I was determined to pray him back!

My husband never knew any of this until much later, but I committed to pray for Travis for 21 days of raging battle. There wasn’t any of this “Lord help my husband” prayer stuff going on. This was one woman standing against an evil plan to rob God’s kingdom of a future war hero!

Each day after he left for work I would worship God and pray. I began by asking Him to remind me of the man He created my husband to be.

I need to express that though Travis never stopped loving God and he was saved, he was still in a very dead place. He was like many other walking dead soldiers in God’s army we see walking around everyday.

Ezekiel 37:1-14   “Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the LORD.’” AND “Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’”  So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.”

I prophesied to my husband’s dry bones. “Rise up you trail blazer! Rise up and be healed in Jesus name!” I declared violently all that the Lord showed me that my husband IS a mighty leader. I rebuked apathy and prayed that passion would stir in his heart for the things of God. Then the Lord showed me a dam that was blocking the flow of God in Trav’s heart. It had been built as a self-protection after wounds from the church. So I commanded that the wall come down.

Sounds kind of impressive, right? I promise you that it took every ounce of faith I could muster up combined with anger to take this stand against the enemy of my marriage. I had to fight my own apathy that was urging me that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Having a “talk” with Travis seemed at the time like it would work faster than trusting God to do His part. But moving forward in ministry without him was NEVER an option.

There’s a saying that goes like this, “when you point your finger at someone you will have three pointing back at yourself”.  Wouldn’t you know it, one day the Lord said, “Today we are going to talk about you”.

To this day I couldn’t even tell you where that scripture is that talks about wives submitting to their husband for he is her head. I am not saying I disagree with it. I just don’t usually memorize chapter and verse, but this day God brought me right to it and He showed me some things I needed to work on for myself.  Things like honoring my husband with my words or lack of words. I sometimes like to throw out a “what were you thinking “, or “I told you so” when I could be demonstrating grace and love that covers.

He also showed me that I needed to trust my husband actively. That means instead of freaking out on him when he has ideas that don’t seem logical to me, I honor him by immediately coming alongside to support his vision. It’s more of a, “we can do it together” attitude cause “I believe in you”; verses a “don’t you dare take me out of my comfort zone” approach.

Okay, so lots of tears and dying to myself. Maybe a few “poor me’s” and another day in the 21 days down.

Date night took a turn for the worse. We actually paid a whole lot of money so we could pull into a parking lot and duke it out. Forgetting I was in the middle of a battle against the enemy of this world, I got ambushed and became confused by what my enemy looks like. He suddenly bore a strong resemblance to my husband. I was actually crushed by the words that were spoken that night in regards to our finances. All this made praying the next day that much more difficult.

Worship music on, bitter tears streaming down my face and a stubborn streak that refuses to give up creating an atmosphere for battle. I will never forget this day as long as I live because God taught me a powerful lesson. I laid myself on God’s altar, a living sacrifice dead to my will but alive to God. He said, “Rebecca, you may not always be able to trust your husband, but you can always trust Me through your husband as you submit to him. When you obey Me I will take care of you and protect you.”

I believe with all of my heart that I defeated Satan that day. I stripped him of his power when I humbled myself and prayed blessings and favor over Travis. This is when I began to see sparkles of hope, glimpses of change.

The 21 days were barely over when I asked Travis if he wanted to come to a prayer meeting with me. Can you believe he said, “yes”? I managed to play it cool and not scare him with a leap for joy.

That night the same woman who prophesied that Travis would support me in my ministry spoke very powerfully over him. He was so moved by her words that spoke of the deepest things in his heart that he could not speak lest he be overcome with tears. In all of our years together I had seen Travis cry twice; once when his Mom died and once when we miscarried.  But there before me she spoke of the dam that was blocking the flow of God in Travis’ life and she said that tonight it was coming down. No one but God and I had spoken of this before. She said that she saw Travis building something three times and the first two someone came over and knocked it all down. But the third time God was saying that He would build it and no one could knock it down.

God began putting people in my husband’s life wherever he went who chiseled away at that dam and called out the gifts of God in Him. It was amazing to watch and know that just between me and God we had went to war for Him.

The change didn’t come by nagging, telling all of my friends, or by giving up and settling for cheap mediocrity. It cost me a lot, my pride, my time, my comfort and my will.  But I got the passionate man I married back.  My faith for the power of prayer has exploded. And now we are working together in ministry more and more. I still get all I need from God, but I have a partner in this life who supports me and challenges me.

Are you tired of the dull, waxy flavor of “good”? I challenge you to pay a higher price for the finest marriage rich and satisfying that comes through sacrifice and prayer. This is a battle only YOU can fight. It won’t be easy, but it will be rewarding.

Pat Benatar wasn’t joking when she sang Love Is A Battlefield.  Those few rare couples who are still in love after 30 plus years have paid a price to enjoy the depth they now experience in their marriage. Living on love only gets you to the altar and through the honeymoon. But a husband who still adores his wife’s body after stretch marks and loose skin births confidence in in a woman that no magazine cover can compare to.

And a wife who believes in her husband even when the world seems to have devalued him is a wife who sets herself up as his safe place.

Marriage isn’t really that hard if you just follow one scripture every day. “Greater love has no man than this, that he would lay down his life for a friend.”

Take your places on your knees soldiers and go to battle for your spouse and for your marriage. Don’t be confused by your enemy as you fight for love.

The picture above is from a photo shoot I did for my friend  Katie Coiner who had an idea for a shot called “The Battle Is Fought And Won In Prayer”. When she asked me to be a part of her vision it just so happened that I was writing this piece and thought it would be perfect with my blog. Please visit her site so you can see the actual shot she used and hear her story behind her art. She has also posted a short interview with me on prayer. I LOVE her work and her heart for the Lord! Don’t forget to leave her a comment!

This morning I have once again been playing catch up on the computer while giving only a small portion of my attention to the worship music playing in the background. But one small phrase caught my ear and overwhelmed my heart.

I am SO not a poet. I am actually more of a logical thinker which makes it sometimes difficult for me to put into words the explosions of love and gratefulness bursting inside of my heart for my Lord and Saviour. Thankfully, God has gifted others to write beautiful worship songs which enable me to express my heart to Him.

In my busyness, I almost missed this thought that has now opened my mind to a new way of viewing who I am or maybe I should say Who’s I am. “take His Name” is all that I can remember from the last hour of music playing. But my thoughts have immediately shifted to my single years.

My maiden name bares much shame. My father was extremely abusive to my Mom in many ways. I spent the first 18 years of my life in fear and shame for all of the sexual abuse my ,suppose to be protector, inflicted on me. Not only could I NOT wait to get out of there, but even after I became a Christian I longed for a new name. I wanted to put my past in the past once and for all. I had even considered taking my beloved step fathers name, but knew that my time would come soon enough. And my patience paid off.

When I was 25 I became Mrs. Rebecca Gates and breathed a sigh of relief. The new Gates legacy began with my godly father in law. He is a man of prayer, mercy, integrity and faith. My husband has followed in his fathers footsteps. He honors me with his eyes and his affections and respect. I have taken on my husbands name and, in many ways, his identity.

And then I thought, “yes Lord, I do want Your name”. The idea of being called a Christian and finding my identity in him was not foreign to me. I’ve heard it preached my whole life. But the passion I have felt as I now imagine myself a bride standing before an awesome God is stirring change in my thinking. I picture myself as I was at 17 years old when I asked Jesus to take me as I was with nothing to offer, but shame, a young woman labeled dirty and unlovable. My life was hopeless, and yet God proved the world wrong. It was then that He changed my name. And I am forever changing more each day into His image of me. In other words, because of Jesus in me, God sees me as beautiful, wanted, faithful, worthy, godly, and anything else that is pure and good. This is who I am now since I have received His Son. I am so honored to bare His name.