The “Other” Good Fruit

Let me just start by saying I am no one special. I can show you in scripture that God doesn’t even have favorites. But the stories I am about to share with you may just cause you to believe otherwise.  Well, that is unless you chose to write off each miracle as coincidence, as some are in the habit of doing.

I too used to inadvertently overlook God’s goodness in my life simply by “if it’s your will” prayers. How could I give God credit for the things He was doing in my life when I had not even asked Him for any of it? Not having had a conversation with God about my needs and hopes made it really easy to overlook His favor on me and credit coincidence instead. I think I was scared to believe Him for the rewards that He promises in scripture. Often times, I didn’t even know what they were. I lived out my “faith” knowing in my head that God was good, but never really believing in my heart that His goodness was for me.

The first time I remember taking a chance to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8), I was reading a familiar scripture. I had always been taught that I should read the Bible as if it were a letter to me, but there were plenty of scriptures, like the one I am about to share, that I would skip over because I didn’t feel good enough. This is what I read that day and decided NOT to skim through it as though I was reading someone else’s letter.

1Corinthians 14:1AMP, “EAGERLY PURSUE and seek to acquire [this] love [make it your aim, your great quest]; and earnestly desire and cultivate the spiritual endowments (gifts), especially that you may prophesy interpret the divine will and purpose in inspired preaching and teaching).”

After a long stammering prayer, I finally got up the nerve to ask God for the gift of prophesy. I mean, it said “ESPECIALLY” desire that one. I even asked God to forgive me in advance if I was being prideful for asking.

The next thing I know, I am seeing this gift at work in my life, and THAT was my first delicious taste of God’s goodness to ME.

I saw the gift at work when I received an email from a friend who was requesting prayer for her rapidly thinning hair. Immediately I felt impressed to give her a scripture, but the one God whispered to me seemed so silly. I swallowed my pride and sent it anyway. A couple years later my friend ran up to me and reminded me of the verse I had given her, “And the very hairs on your head are all numbered.” (Matthew 10:30)

She shared a miraculous testimony with me of praying and standing on that scripture until her hair was completely restored. She said that it had grown in so thick that strangers would even marvel at her thick mane. That’s the goodness of God demonstrated to her AND to ME!

Growing more confident in God’s favor towards me I asked Him one day why I never get those I-just-read-your-mail-kind of words for people. I immediately heard Him respond, “That’s the gift of the Word Of Knowledge, and you haven’t asked me for that yet. Would you like that too?”

Talking to God is so fun! He really cracks me up. Of course I said “yes” and soon after I texted my friend something that the Lord had showed me: and her response, “You just read my mail.” We were both encouraged and saw the goodness of God active in our lives.

There has also been a ton of little things that I’ve almost overlooked if God had not drawn my attention back to those prayers.

My son Caleb had a small mouth as a baby. Now, that didn’t stop him form being loud, but it did mean that when his big boy teeth came in, his teeth would be crowded. The dentist was sure he would need braces.  I prayed and committed it to the Lord every time I thought about it until I forgot. Now that he is nearly 10 years old and he has a perfect straight smile it dawned on me that this is another miracle and evidence that God cares for the details of my family’s lives even when they seem a bit vain.

I can pray in confidence for healing for my family, including their teeth, because I know the scriptures promising God’s healing and I believe them.

I don’t mean to say “if it’s your will” prayers are not heard by God.  A willingness to agree with God for His will in every circumstance is a sweet place to start.  I believe that we can KNOW God’s will and then pray it out with understanding. Then when we see our prayers answered the way we prayed them we get to rejoice in God’s provision. It’s exciting and faith building each time we discover that God really does move mountains for us. It is so fun to get to partner with God to see His will become a reality.

The best way to know God’s will is to know what the Bible says. We learn through great preaching and teaching, but my personal favorite is to learn by reading it and listening to it on CD for myself. Then it’s not filtered through what someone else has experienced. It’s the Word of God in raw goodness speaking to me where I am at each day.

The next challenge occurs when coming across scripture that challenges our thinking.  First, we have to believe what it says regardless of what we may have been taught in Sunday school. Is it possible that everyone makes mistakes? Is it possible that there have been trends in applying the Scriptures that may have been a little off? Maybe those trends have caused us to question the original spiritual truth.

“We know in part and we prophesy in part.” (1 Corinthians 13:9) In other words, we are all still learning and that’s okay.

Even more challenging still is overcoming our own insecurities to recognize our value to God.  I had to swallow what I didn’t recognize as pride in order to humbly ask God to give me a gift that I felt unworthy to receive.

I took a chance and discovered that it gave God pleasure to give me the desires of my heart. (Psalm 37:4)

Knowing scripture serves as a safety measure when hearing God for His will through personal revelation. Some refer to these revelations as God-whispers or a sense in your heart. Whatever you call it, you need to know that you can hear God and know His will. And when you do, you get to agree with God in prayer. Talk about praying powerful prayers that you can have full confidence in seeing answered!

Romans 12:2, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”

The way that God changes the way we think is through learning scripture in the raw, and agreeing with what God says. This is what scripture says will teach us to know God’s will, and it is a good and pleasing and perfect will.

I hope you are encouraged today to go after God’s goodness!

Stop back by to hear more of my personal stories of God’s goodness and the things He is showing my husband and I about Spiritual Farming in God’s Goodness (Part 2).

“Shy people are people who have something to hide.” The words stung like a bee attack on my sweet little high school romance. My boyfriend’s dad had made it pretty clear that he didn’t like his son dating me.

I had come a long way from the little girl who used to hide behind my Mom when people would talk to me. But this suspicious father still had me pegged. I was hiding something. I was trying desperately to hide every part of who I was from this man and his perfect little Christian family. Underneath my painful silence was the shame of being molested, raped, and a whole lot of bad choices I made myself. My blushing cheeks were certainly not evidence of my sweet innocence. They revealed my insecurity.

Insecurity has many other faces besides blushing cheeks and a mute mouth, but the one that really freaks me out is most often never discovered. It is disguised in pride, mockery, and control. This kind of insecurity is like a slithering snake; some find it very attractive and are even awed by its beauty or power. Its presence prompts fear, and you sense that if it feels threatened it will strike without warning. Somehow, we keep going back to the snake as if we are seeking its approval or an ally.

The snake is at work in that “mean girl” we met in junior high. We all talked about how much we disliked her, but we all wanted to be her friend anyway.

The snake can be seen in the person who somehow always talks you into doing things you don’t really want to do, but for some reason you just can’t say “no”.

It can rear its ugly head at you in passive aggressive jabs, coarse joking at your expense and other means that leave you wondering, “Is it just me or is this person totally putting me down?”

Insecurity victimizes so many in our broken society, but how do we love an insecure person without letting its demon control us with its venomous ways? Is it possible for me to do enough for this person to fill their void?

I’m not going to lie, catch me on a bad day in a group of people I don’t know or feel comfortable with, and I may revert to old insecure feelings. The difference is that I won’t make it all about me in those situations again. The stinging truth is that shy, insecure people are very self-absorbed people. All I used to think about was what others thought about me. How comfortable I was, how I looked, me, me, I, I. It never occurred to me that maybe someone else in the room may be feeling uncomfortable, and I could be a safe place for them.

I had a beautiful, charismatic confident teacher, Lynn Dicken-Cerullo who once said to my class, “ When you walk into a room, instead of wondering if anyone is going to like you, say to your self, ‘Everyone here LOVES me!!’” I still laugh every time I have to remind myself to think this way, but the reality for all of us is we are created in God’s image, all of mankind including YOU. So, with that in mind, the better question is, “why WOULDN’T everyone love us?”

I had some paradigm shifting to do before I could be free of my insecurity chain. But before that, it didn’t matter how hard someone tried to make me feel welcomed, loved, or accepted they couldn’t fill my bottomless pit. Sadly, if someone tried I would be more successful in depleting them than they would be in meeting my needs. I needed to change and people are helpless to change other people.

So the answer is “NO.” No matter how many hoops we jump through for someone, or how many favors we do for them, or how many times we put an insecure person’s needs above our own, they will still not get their need for acceptance and love filled up by us. In fact, we will actually be getting in the way of the ONE who is able.

God has a BIG job to do, and, admittedly, I sometimes think that I can do His job for Him. I just want to help Him so badly, so I play God to others for Him. But what usually happens … okay fine! What ALWAYS happens when I do that is I get in God’s way, and I mess things up worse for others and for myself. I prolong the suffering in their life just because I was trying to end it quicker.

Here’s the problem with the insecurity snake versus us; when we choose loose boundaries based on our own insecurities, we get burned and blame the person we were so diligently trying to love. But, whose fault is it really? Is it God’s for not protecting us? Is it the other person for asking too much of us? Or is it ours for needing something from them that we should have been getting from God?

Think of the way a python grips its prey tighter each time the victim tries to take its next breath until the snake suffocates the life out before eating it whole. It swallows the victim leaving nothing behind.

When we allow ourselves to become entangled by this serpent the person we once were will soon cease to exist. You can see this in any abusive relationship. The dominant forces at work in an abuser will strip its dependent of their identity, likes, dislikes, confidence and drive. Ever wonder why an abused wife doesn’t run? She doesn’t believe she can survive without her abuser. And she often feels sorry for him.

Insecurity can look a lot like puppy dog eyes too.  It’s the sad little face that makes you feel responsible for someone else’s happiness. Insecure mothers, for example, may feel rejected when their kids no longer need them. She may allow insecurity to control the way she communicates with her children. Eventually her kids don’t even want to pick up the phone because they are tired of the guilt trips.

You know, there’s a reason why a mothers milk dries up eventually, and it’s a reminder that we mothers aren’t supposed to be our children’s life source. We get to teach them to feed themselves, make good choices and prepare them to leave our nest. It’s not easy for any of us, but confident mothers will allow children the opportunity to spread their wings, make a few mistakes, and eventually soar!

We can all avoid becoming a female dog by not using manipulation to control others we care about. The saying really is true. “If you love somebody let them go. If they never come back they were not yours to begin with.” But a healthy relationship will respect each other’s boundaries without taking up an offense.

So many books have been written on boundaries and this is why. It is the key to loving that little puppy dog without being choked by its leash. Boundaries will allow you to love your friends and your family in a way that will protect them and keep you from getting entangled in an unhealthy relationship.

So how do we recognize an insecure relationship?

I think 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 says it best.  “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

I don’t know too many people whose actions live up to this all of the time, so grace is needed in every relationship. But a healthy relationship will more often express love with these qualities. But what if it doesn’t?

If we are not setting clear boundaries with an insecure person, it will become increasingly difficult to love him or her with this perfect love. The more we do things for them that we don’t want to do, the more we allow them to make their frustrations our frustrations, when we take up their offenses without seeing the other side we will soon burnout.

Whether we want to overcome our own insecurity or help someone overcome his or hers, love is the key. The Bible says that perfect love casts out all fear and insecurity is rooted in fear. We will overcome our insecurity the more we understand how much God loves us. And we can help others by loving them as we love our self.

Matthew 22:37-40 AMP, “And He replied to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind (intellect). This is the great (most important, principal) and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as [you do] yourself. These two commandments sum up and upon them depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 7:12 NASB, “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”

Learning to love God and learning to love ourselves empowers us to love others. We won’t be very good at loving until we have learned to love ourselves, and we won’t know how to love our self until we have discovered our value from knowing God’s love. No wonder these are the greatest commands! Abiding by them will keep us safe and to teach us to be a safe place for our friends and family.

Insecurity takes many faces; blushing cheeks, slithering snakes, and female dogs to name a few. These are your enemy, but your friend’s face is not.  If you are angry and at the end of your rope with your “neighbor”; establish healthy boundaries with them, and then fight FOR them not against them.

Ephesians 6:10-20, “A final word: Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil. For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places. Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm. Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God’s righteousness. For shoes, put on the peace that comes from the Good News so that you will be fully prepared. In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil. Put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.”

I can’t promise that healthy boundaries and walking in love will be received well in all of your relationships, but the Bible tells us in Romans 12:18NAS, “If it be possible, as much as lies in you, live peaceably with all men.” Just do your part and trust the Lord to cover you.

It was so stinky. It smelled like something had died! No, I am not talking about our car on an eighteen-hour road trip with my boys, although that blog is coming. I am talking about the shallow, murky waters I have come across when my parents use to make me go camping. Whatever life may have once thrived in the stagnant bodies of water has since died. The stench enters your nostrils about the time you see the slimy green fur peeking through its shoreline. Sometimes there is even an oily haze over the top hiding the waters ability to offer the sunlight’s reflection.

It wasn’t long ago that my days were spent in secret. I wasn’t hiding; I was just hidden in my cocoon and enjoying a season of rest. I had been through a tough first 30 some years of my life and God gave me that time to recover from heartbreak in ministry, relationships, and mommy exhaustion; but, mostly mommy exhaustion.

Having two boys about 16 months apart while going through extreme financial hardship, and so many other disappointments had me praying crazy prayers. “Lord, please let me have a nervous break down so I can go away to a hospital for a little while. No one knows how strong I have had to be or how my high tolerance for pain has shielded them from realizing how badly I need help. Lord help me to lose control so I can get help”.

Well, I guess I am stronger than I thought. The funny farm never took me away in a little white jacket, but God literally hid me away under His broad shadow.

My kids were growing more independent, so I got to spend hours out of my day praying and studying the Bible. Being new to the area, I didn’t have very many friends yet, nor did I spend much time on the phone since I was getting filled up on God’s Word.  My home was my oasis, and I loved never leaving it.

But then God started drawing attention to me. He rolled back His shadow and nudged me out of the nest. He told me He was going to do it. He even got my permission first. Still, I was angry when He first asked me to step back into leadership and ministering to people outside of my own home. I knew the pulls that would come to tug me away from spending time with Him or from putting my family first. I remembered the pride of moving up in leadership, of getting noticed and forgetting that God was the more amazing one and I was just to be His friend as I loved others like He loved me.

I didn’t want any part in all of that mess!  I didn’t want to be distracted from the revelations that He was giving me. But mostly, I think I was afraid. I never wanted to go back to having all the right things to say but without really knowing God. I knew I would die if I ever found myself too busy to hear Him again.

I remember having the worship music playing in the background as I began to curl up next to Jesus to hear what was on His heart for the day. He kept showing me His heart for friends and asking me to get up and share it with them in emails right away. He would speak to me encouraging words for them as I typed.

At first it was fun, but then I got frustrated. I started to wonder if I was reverting back to my old ways of going to God just to get something for someone else.  I wanted any ministry I did to come from the overflow of what God was doing in my own heart.

What happened next is not something I would recommend. It’s one of those moments when you ask yourself later, “WHAT WAS I THINKING?!”

Snuggled up to the Lord again, I felt interrupted by the encouraging downloads for someone in my ladies group. This time I said, “NO! I won’t do it. This is OUR time together.”

My response was followed by His silence. And now the very thing I feared had come upon me.

This year God has shown me how life in Him is meant to be like a powerful river.

Much like a river where the rushing waters produce oxygen for the fish and living creatures to breath causing them to thrive; when God is allowed to flow through us like a river He will breath life into us and into the lives all around.  Many waters trickle downward towards the river from the mountaintops until the river grows wider and stronger.

But the day that I said “no” to God I built a dam that ceased His flow in my life.  I could no longer receive from my life source nor did I have anything to give until I was willing to damn that dam.

The longer we allow a dam to stop the flow of God in and through us the more life will cease to exist. When I stopped the flow of God in my life, I was like a slowly diminishing puddle. My heart began to grow stale and a haze started to form over it hiding my ability to offer the Son’s light and His reflection.

I don’t want to be a stinky, shallow, follower of Christ that no one can stand being around. This year I have learned how to get filled up without holding on to tightly to the deep waters because I know that there is always more rushing to meet me. He is a River that will never run dry just so long as I stay open to receive and I never build dams.

Psalm 1:3 “They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season, their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.”

Jeremiah 17:8, “For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters that spreads out its roots by the river; and it shall not see and fear when heat comes; but its leaf shall be green. It shall not be anxious and full of care in the year of drought, nor shall it cease yielding fruit.”

Part II of the series Discovering Your Husband As Your Greatest Ally

Part I: Becoming Your Husband’s Advocate (READ FIRST)

In part one of this series we learned about becoming a safe place for our husband to grow by aligning ourselves with Jesus as our mate’s advocate. It is the foundation that must be laid before our spouse can begin to trust us to be on his team. It takes us out of the way of what God wants to do in our husband’s life and removes our burden to be his “holy spirit”.

And change begins … with us first.

Part II: It’s An Honor To Give Honor

Regardless of what men say, I think we women are pretty predictable. I realize I’m about to spout off several generalizations, but it’s my blog so I get to say what I want.

Little girls want to grow up, get married, and have babies. We dream of our wedding day. We all have expectations of what married family life will look like. We marry boys who have not given it much thought, and now we get to tell them what we expect. And when they don’t get it, we push harder until we either rule as king of the home, or we continue a daily battle with our spouse for the position.

When we girls get together, the conversation will inevitably begin with our pregnancy and birthing stories. We won’t agree on our birthing methods, but we will compete for the “hardest possible labor” prize. Once a winner has emerged, the rest of us will concede by moving on to a new competition.

We will share stories of dirty socks left on the floor, the husband who works too much, the one who has time management challenges and can’t seem to make it home on time. We will all agree that the man we chose for ourselves is severely flawed and seem to laugh at our own misfortune. One story will be told after the other, and each time we tell our own, we will try to outdo all the others.

In the presence of our friends, sometimes our children and often in front of our spouse, we begin to strip our husband naked with our words. We expose his weaknesses and emasculate him until we have won the competition. The prize we are awarded is a man who, realizing he can never please the woman he married, gives up trying. He loses his drive and can’t seem to get ahead anymore. He is afraid to take a chance, so he never gets the big promotion. He stops using his gifts and stops growing. He stops reaching out because who is there to talk to now that all of his friends know what a failure he is?

We have a great laugh at our husband’s expense, but we got so much more because our words lingered in his ear until they produced a harvest of weeds, choking out the future of our marriage and successes of our family. The words have suffocated the affections he once had, and we can’t stop wondering when he lost that look he use to get in his eye when we walked into the room. But we won.

“The wise woman builds her house but the foolish one tears it down with her own hands.” Proverbs 14:1

Here’s how God showed me how to build my house.

If Jesus, the son of God, couldn’t do great things in his own hometown, saying “A prophet has no honor in his hometown,” then our husband, who doesn’t happen to also be God, won’t be able to do great things in his home without HONOR either. But what could he do with a little (or a lot) of honor?

I know that honor is said to be man’s greatest need, but I had to ask myself, “ What the heck is honor anyway?! And how do I give it to my husband?”

I had been on this amazing ride with Jesus for a while prior to my pursuit to win back my husband’s passion for the Lord and for me. So when I asked the Lord about honor, He was able to show me how my relationship with Him had been a demonstration of what honor looks like.

Everyday I enjoyed being in a relationship with Jesus. Everyday I asked Him about my day before it began. I had grown to trust Him so completely that there wasn’t anything that I didn’t ask Him about. And I knew that there wasn’t anything that He would ask me to do that I would regret doing. I saw His ways as higher than my ways and I esteemed Him by listening to Him and [gasp] by obeying.

Ephesians 5:21, “ And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.”

This is the part where we all start to freak out. We think of the mean, controlling, chauvinistic men who abuse weak women, and we don’t want to be weak. We know we are smart. God gave us a good brain to use, and we don’t need to answer to some man, right?

There I go making generalizations again. But before you click back to your Facebook page, at least hear me out. Let me tell you how this amazing, offensive way of the Bible has brought me everything my heart had ever hoped for in my marriage. By the end, you may even think it’s worth reposting.

I don’t think I would have been able to honor my husband in the way God was calling me to if I had not already grown to trust my Lord with such assurance.

I had a big decision to make. It was weighing heavy on me, and I didn’t really believe that Travis could help me make it, but I trusted that if I obeyed God in submitting to my husband, He would cover me even if Travis was wrong.

I knew Travis wasn’t used to me listening to him, so it made it easy for him to spout out from emotion his opinions. Slightly angry, I pointed my finger at his face and said, “I want you to know that I am going to be asking your advice on some things and you had BETTER hear from God before you answer because I am actually going to listen!!”

I don’t remember him saying anything, just that his jaw dropped a little. There were no words that could be spoken. I’m not even sure if he believed me, but soon he would see a complete turn around.

It was so humbling submitting my life to him, and then submitting my will to God’s will and honoring Travis’s ways above my own ideas. Secretly, I was setting out to prove God wrong. He would soon see that this would NEVER work! OK, I obviously had some more growth that needed to happen in the area of trusting God. I was driven in the beginning by this stubborn resolve that I was going to do exactly what God and Trav told me to do until everything was a mess. Then they would have to agree that everything was much better when I did things my own way.

I discovered that God is more stubborn than me.

He kept bringing about such good fruit in my life every time! I began to see God’s protection literally shielding me from dangers. I saw how many of my relationships were realigned. I saw how when I listened and followed my husband’s advice, I was less stressed out trying to do things I wasn’t meant to be doing. He asked me to lay some big responsibilities down so that I could focus on the things that would make my own dreams come true.

He started caring about my dreams coming true! He has been and continues to be my biggest supporter, honest encourager, and even acts as my personal agent at times. He believes in me more than I believe in myself and pushes me past my limits all the time.

I have seen how my husband’s shoulders broadened to protect me. His heart has turned towards me. And his eyes now light up again when he sees me. I don’t feel invisible to him anymore now that I can clearly see he is passionate for me.

He esteems me highly. It’s what I had wanted all along, but couldn’t get him to see in me what there was to prize. He started inviting me into his world and sharing his heart with me. Even now he asks me what I think and agrees with me. The way he listens and repeats the things I say to him like it is treasure honors me and makes me feel like the most special woman in the world.

1 Peter 5:6, “So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time he will lift you up in honor.”

So many women I know are scared to enter into the kind of relationship with her husband where he is a bigger part of her decision-making process. They are afraid of what he will say. They aren’t confident that he really believes in them or truly understands what they need. But, generally speaking again, they deeply desire to know him as their greatest ally.

I can promise you that the perspective your husband will offer you is going to be very different than what your girlfriends are going to tell you. I can promise you that he will say things that stretch you and sometimes even hurt a little because the truth hurts sometimes, but it frees us.

I can promise you that opening yourself up in such a vulnerable way to your spouse is going to be one of the hardest things you have ever done. And I can promise you that if you choose to submit yourself to him as unto the Lord, you will see your husband’s heart flourish with passion for you, for the Lord, and with hope for the things he can accomplish.

You may be like I was when the Lord first asked me to honor my husband in submission. You may have to trust that if the Lord asks you to do something, He is going to cover you and come through for you when you obey God. And even in my stubbornness to prove that this was a mistake, I am thankful that it was God’s pleasure to prove me wrong. He was delighted to show me that His ways are higher than mine and that in spite of my pride, I was still able to see the blessing of the Lord on my marriage because I gave it my best shot, swallowed my pride, and honored my husband anyway.

Honor bestows honor. Let change begin with you.

Part 1: Becoming His Advocate

I have this picture of my husband and I on our wedding day. I pass by it on the shelf often without really noticing it most of the time.  I can’t say that a flood of emotions fill my heart when I hold it thinking back on that very special day.

When this moment was snapped into existence I was just a little annoyed with the man of my dreams. Travis was being a bit silly instead of following the romantic script I had in my head for our wedding day. I suppose that was the day it all began. I realized I had a lot of work ahead of me if I was going to change Travis into Mr. Perfect as defined by me. Maybe that’s why we fought so much the first year or maybe it was just because we didn’t seem to speak the same language. It seemed that every effort to communicate turned into a war. We both secretly wondered at times how we would make it knowing that for us divorce was not an option and couldn’t even become a second thought.

Our church welcomed Trav’s favorite pastor, Duane Vanderclock and his wife, to share a message on marriage. I don’t remember much of what we learned, just one quote from the pastor about how for the first seven years of his marriage he had been a jerk and didn’t know it. I prayed, “GOD get me through to our seventh year!”

For seven years whenever we had a fight, or my feelings were hurt I thought ahead to the day my husband would miraculously change and be who I thought he should be. Just a few more years to go…

I can’t imagine what it would be like to sense your life partner’s prideful disapproval all the time. It must’ve been like an attack on Travis’s identity. He would have no other choice but to resist me unless he was willing to let go of who God had created him to be. In a very practical sense I had made myself his opponent. In fact, I was standing with the enemy as the “accuser of the brethren” Maybe that’s why he tried to cast demons out of me.

Revelations 12:10b NLT, “…for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down to earth—the one who accuses them
before our God day and night.”

Day and night I could not appreciate who my husband was because I was too busy pointing out his weaknesses. I was coming into agreement with my husband’s enemy and using my powerful position as his wife to tear him down. Proverbs says that the wise woman builds her house but the foolish woman tears hers down with her OWN HANDS.

I thought I was pretty smart, but I was acting the fool. Sadly, pride blinded me to my folly until God humbled me. That’s a whole other story, but September 2009, just before my husband’s birthday, God gave us both a great present. And there began a most fulfilling future for our marriage.

After several years of Humility at Every Last Level bootcamp, God had a hold of my heart completely. I fell in love so deeply with Jesus that I didn’t need anything else from anyone. He so completely filled me up that I didn’t look to Travis for romance, encouragement, help or wisdom. I thought I was in a really good place, but God gave me an assignment to pray for my husband and to pursue his heart with the same fervency I had pursued God’s.

Here is an entry from my journal from my first day on the job:

“Today begins day one of my commitment to submit to my husband against my own will. I’m doing it not because I feel like he deserves it. I’m doing it as unto the Lord because God has my heart, my attention, my affections. I am doing this because God has been good to me. He loves me, is faithful, respects me, esteems me highly and I know He has my best interests in mind whenever He asks me to do anything. God is never selfish. I am doing this because I trust GOD! I trust Him alone to meet my every need and I want Him.”

Well, it was an honest start at least and that is all God wants. He didn’t need me to pretend that my heart was pure and whole. He just needed me to begin to agree with Him so that as I interceded for my husband, Christ would conform my heart to the Father’s will in every purpose, thought and action for Travis.

1 John 2:1AMP, “MY LITTLE children, I write you these things so that you may not violate God’s law and sin. But if anyone should sin, we have an Advocate (One Who will intercede for us) with the Father–it is Jesus Christ, the all righteous [upright, just, Who conforms to the Father's will in every purpose, thought, and action].

Definition of Intercede: 1. to plead on behalf of someone, especially when the person is about to be punished; 2. to act as a mediator

Synonyms: mediate, advocate, intervene, intrude, assist, arbitrate

Antonyms: remove [oneself], antagonize

Tips: Intercede is derived from the Latin intercedere, which means “intervene, go between.” Interceding refers to getting in the middle of something and intervening, but it goes beyond intervening, as you are intervening in order to help someone.

I changed teams that day. Instead of standing in agreement with our enemy, the accuser, I stood with Christ and began to remind God of who He created my husband to be. I thought about the man I had agreed to spend the rest of my life with and what I had once seen in him. I reminded God of THAT man and I reminded myself too. The Holy Spirit showed me things about Travis that I had not seen before and I declared those things over Travis in the Spirit.

This was a covert mission. I didn’t tell Trav anything about what the Lord was showing me. Any change that I would see would not come from a place of Travis trying to strive to be something that God had not done in him.

Exciting? YES! Grueling at times? Definitely. Especially when God began to point ME in the direction of change. I have yet to go to God in complaint about someone when He has not eventually turned my pointing finger back on myself. But in this case God showed me how my husband and I are “one flesh” so when I am praying and interceding for him, I am praying and interceding for myself. We aren’t opponents. We are on the same team. If he loses, I lose. So it is to my benefit that I support my husband, cheer him on, sometimes step out of his way, come behind him as a guard, and invest in him however he needs me to.

Change was definitely taking place and it started in me. As I submitted to God and prayed for my husband, God was changing ME.

As my husband’s advocate my heart began to align with God’s heart or my husband. He even showed me ways that I could demonstrate to my husband that I was on his team.  And I saw something beginning to change in us both. We started talking more. I didn’t feel the same resistance between us keeping us from connecting more intimately. For us the magic number wasn’t 7 years. The miracle came when I decided to obey God and go first. I didn’t need to wait for my husband to be something that he is not before I could come along side of him. He didn’t need to change as much as I did needed to change. And when I let God do His work in me I got to see the birth of a miracle in my marriage.

When I look at that picture now I can’t help but smile. I see two people who barely knew each other making a decision to spend the rest of our lives together. It makes me reminisce on the last 12 years of our lives spent together for richer and poorer, in good times and in bad. But we made it … together as a team. I think about if I had to do it all over again knowing then what I know now I wouldn’t change a single day of getting to know my Travis as he has grown into a pillar of strength and wisdom for our family. My heart swells with pride for this man whom I have come to love so deeply.

I share our story not to dishonor my husband or to say that I had it all together. I was walking in pride and deception as a young wife. From my perspective at the time my husband was the problem. Thankfully, God lovingly intercepted me from tearing down my house with my own hands. I hope you saw that in my story.

Don’t give up. There is hope for your marriage.

Watch for my next blog in this series about how to make your man esteem you with that same look in his eye that he had for you on your wedding day. To be Continued…

Church people. For some, the term is comforting. Wherever you go you look for people to connect with based on whether they consider themselves a part of this culture. You see a fish on the back of a car and you smile a little suddenly feeling less alone on the road. Well, that is until you realize that ‘s NO FISH. It’s an aggressive SHARK that has just cut you off!

Then there are others of us Jesus loving folks who would rather avoid such gatherings of people except that we have learned not to “forsake the assembling of ourselves together”. That was me. Thankfully I say it WAS and not still is me.

I would try not to get to church too early. Then I would sneak out as soon as the church service was over just so that I would not have to have one more wounding interaction with a “sister” in the Lord. I would brush past people as I stared coldly past them. This was me on my good behavior.

It’s like I could sense them, the church people, when they were around me without knowing they were there. Once I joined my husband on a business trip where he would be working with a Christian conference. Carrying my baby and navigating my way through the breakfast crowd at our hotel I spot an empty table where I could settle my kids while I go get their food from the buffet. Just when I was about to sit down this lady dashed in front of me fully aware of me and my three boys … and this is me on a bad day.

Have you ever heard of tourette’s? “A severe neurological disorder characterized by multiple facial and other body tics, often accompanied by grunts and compulsive utterances, as of interjections and obscenities.”

I don’t remember exactly what came out of my mouth that day, but I definitely began to manifest tourette’s not leaving out the obscenities part. That’s when my husband came up behind me all excited. “Look, Honey! All these people are here for the conference. Isn’t it awesome?”

And then there were all the women’s conferences that I avoided because if I were to be honest, I didn’t like women. To me, at the time, it was nothing more than a bunch of church ladies coming together to learn how to be more like Jesus while shoving their way to the front rows to save seats for their little click of buddies. People like me were invisible to them and probably just in their way of “the next move of God”. Ouch, maybe that was TOO honest. But I know some of you can relate. If not, before you get offended and click away, let me tell you about how God pulled the plank out of my own eye.

Who knows why I ever agreed to go to this thing, except that I think my dear friend was performing at my church women’s conference event. I was nervous as I decided what to wear. Too plain? Too tight? Too casual? How would I be judged, I wondered as I held each garment up to the mirror.

My heart beat a little harder the closer I got to the building and once in the parking lot my defenses were completely up. I was armed and ready like a porcupine. No one would dare mess with me.

Immediately I was agitated with the less than friendly greeter. “Why be a greeter if you don’t like people?” I thought to myself.

It wasn’t an audible voice but it was definitely a STRONG voice I heard apprehend my heart. God said,  “Take another look at her. Look in her eyes and tell me what you see”.

And I saw me.

The Lord showed me how this woman was carrying the same hurts I had ruling me. She had stood there at the door as several other women before me had brushed past her devaluing her precious smile and ignoring her greeting. By the time I arrived she wasn’t sure if she could take one more rejection.  She was scared to put herself out there again and was beginning to determine in her heart that the women coming to this conference didn’t need her. We didn’t love her. And she now carried that fear on her face just above the badge on her collar that said, “Greeter”.

My heart broke for her and others just like us. And then I was convicted to change. I realized that I had allowed my offense to make me what I hated. And I was no better than any other woman I had judged for not walking in the love of God that we professed.

That was the day that not only was I healed from my pain as God’s grace covered me and covered my “sisters” in the Lord. I was set free from the bondage of being a walking offense. I determined to prefer others over myself even if that meant I would take a seat in the “nose bleed” section furthest away from the front. I decided that I would not take the offense of rejection from “church people” when they were only acting out of their own pain. Instead, I would make it my mission to love them until they were absolutely uncomfortable. I can’t tell you how fun that is for me with my dry sense of humor.

Hey church people, can we commit to taking another look at our offenders and asking God to give us eyes to see each other the way He sees us? When someone steals our seat, instead of reaching out to receive an offense, wound, or rejection can we reach out in love towards them?

 John 13:34-35AMP, “I give you a new commandment: that you should love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you too should love one another. By this shall all [men] know that you are My disciples, if you love one another [if you keep on showing love among yourselves].”

So if your sister takes your chair turn your other cheek and put them on another seat. Or something like that  ;)

In June of 1999 I made a decision to change my identity. I was actually pretty anxious to do so. I went from carrying my Dad’s name, Olsen to taking my husband’s name, Gates.

As an Olsen, I was marked by the shame it carried not because of who I was, but because of who my father was. He was a wife beater, and a child molester. He had some good qualities too, but I’m trying to make a point here so bare with me.

As a Gates, because of the man my husband is I share in the honor my husband’s name carries, not because of who I am, but because of who he is.

I cannot tell you how often people come up to me excited to meet me because they know and respect my husband. I love that by the way.

When I took Trav’s name I had instant access to all that belongs to him. AND he had access to all that I have. In fact, who I am can either bring honor to his name or dishonor.

In light of this let’s reconsider Exodus 20:7, “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.”

My mama use to forbid me from saying “OH MY GOD!” Now as a young CA valley girl, this was difficult for me cuz, like , it’s so totally embarrassing to say, like Oh my GOSH! But I didn’t want to die and go to hell for taking the Lord’s name in vain either.

Okay, I still never say it and I teach my kids not to either, but the idea of this being the interpretation of this verse has never settled well with me.

The definition of vain is this: 1. Not yielding the desired outcome; fruitless: a vain attempt. 2. Lacking substance or worth.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to say that taking the Lord’s name in vain is calling ourselves a child of God and not yielding the desired outcome, as in not expressing His heart to others? Fruitlessness? Lacking the substance of who He is or not displaying His worth?

Just like I have TAKEN my husband’s name. I have also TAKEN the Lord’s name. I pray that I have not done so in vain, but that my life would bring honor to God, demonstrating His power as I walk in the authority He has given me: that my life in God would be fruitful and lacking nothing of worth and substance that His name carries or implies for me.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Gates
Child Of God

My bathroom looked liked a scene from a bloody horror movie. I felt weak and my will to live was slowly fading with each drop of blood. My baby was passing quickly from me in what most people consider just an opportunity to “try again”. I can’t blame them. Unless you have experienced a miscarriage you have no idea of this devastating feeling.  You feel like you have been robbed of a life meant to bring joy to your own. If it wasn’t for God’s GRACE that has a way of reaching down into the darkest despair and pulling out a basket full of hope and promise, I don’t know if I would still be stained by my disappointment.

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted a baby girl who looked just like me. I told my husband before we got married that WHEN we had a daughter we would name her Grace after my Grandmother. It was a prerequisite for marriage. I loved my Grandma and the sweet godly woman that she had always been to me.

We had three boys and each time I just KNEW this one would be my Grace. But three was enough and I was ready to bring an end to sleepless nights and stinky diapers. But Travis wasn’t too excited about setting an appointment for a safe little procedure I like to call “peace of mind”. And then I was late, not to an appointment. No, I was “late” and a test confirmed that I was pregnant.

I may not be like many of my friends who take a “more the merrier” approach to child bearing, but I ALWAYS rejoice over life. I was instantly in love.  I wondered if this would be my sweet little baby Grace.

We sold our car and bought something a little bigger. Of course I started planning for our new addition to our family, though I would never see one day of his life. I would never see his face or hear his voice. I only held his lifeless body in the palm of my hand once in the middle of my blood stained bathroom.

There was no funeral, no burial.  His body was still warm from the warmth of my own. My belly had been like a tomb for several days and now I was just suppose to put my baby in a zip lock baggy for the doctor to examine in the morning. It didn’t seem natural, but neither did holding a dead fetus all night. So, for sanities sake, I went to bed leaving my baby in the other room alone.

I needed to somehow assign value to his short-lived life, so I gave him a name.  For some reason I had been drawn to the name Jack. The name also carried sentimental emotion since my husband’s maternal Grandpa’s name was Jack. Travis’s Mom had gone to be with the Lord and I knew how special her Dad had been to her. So, to honor her, we named our son Jackson. But, my kids and I fondly refer to him as Baby Jack Jack.

While visiting my friend who lives on the corner of Jackson Court and Jackson Street, she told me the meaning of the name Jackson. She probably wondered why she even said this, but she told us that Jackson means grace.

I don’t talk about Jackson very much not because my loss is still raw and painful, but mostly just because it makes other people feel uncomfortable. But for some reason, after Carin shared the meaning of the name, I announced that I had a baby waiting for me in heaven named Jackson.

It wasn’t until I got in my car to drive home that the Lord grabbed my attention and said, “Didn’t you always ask me for a Grace?” “You had no idea the meaning of your son’s name, Jackson, ,but I did.”

I have never once believed that God took my baby. The Bible says that the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but Jesus came to give life more abundantly. So, with that resolved, my heart is free and wide open for God to overwhelm me with hope in Him. His faithfulness to me goes beyond my expectations. This story is an expression of the way He cares for every detail of all that is special to me.

He cares about your disappointments too.  Maybe you have not lost a baby, but you carry other disappointments. Miscarriage is “an unsuccessful outcome of something planned”.  I pray that God’s would show you where his gift of grace is waiting for you too.

Grace: The divine favor toward man; the mercy of God, as distinguished from His justice; also, any benefits His mercy imparts; divine love or pardon; a state of acceptance with God; enjoyment of the divine favor.

“Grace never stands alone. It is backed by God’s immeasurable love.” Carin Prickett

 

If you are a baker I am sorry if this blog makes you feel less than or insecure, but I have to tell you the truth. I make THE best cookies! I am sure yours are delicious and I would love for you to try to prove me wrong.  We can arrange for you to drop yours off by my house for me to sample or you can humbly concede.

I believe that there is no such thing as too much chocolate, so I make chocolate, chocolate chip cookies that are worth every calorie. They are, in fact, so good that in the morning when you wake up you will have no regrets even after seeing your morning belly bulge. Your only worry will be if there are any left for breakfast.

The only thing better than these fresh baked cookies is the cookie dough, which is actually the reason I usually make them. I stir in the flour, butter, sugars, cocoa and chips all by hand mainly because I need my family to see to what great effort I go through for them.  I mix the ingredients together with a wooden spoon and my bulging biceps. I use my apron to dab the glistening sweat from my brow until the mixture begins to smooth.

I begin to anticipate all the extra dough I will leave in the bowl for me to eat while the cookies are baking. I forget about the stomachache I got last time and the sugar headache.

I know it is just about ready for me to taste when my arm begins to relax and it takes less effort to stir. But in the beginning it is quite a chore.

Prayer is like this. Oh, you didn’t actually think I was adding a new category to my blog for baking did you?!

We often hear the phrase, “stir yourselves up in your most holy faith” and it sounds really fun and exciting but we don’t really get it … so we don’t do it. And then we lose our excitement.

Today I think I got it!

Oh how I want to make cookies! I should actually rephrase that. I want to EAT cookies. But in order to eat them I will have to get all those ingredients together like the Word of God, the praying in the Spirit, mixed with praying in my understanding and beat it all together using my bulging faith muscle to stir it just as I follow the Holy Spirit led recipe.

Oops! Did I get ahead of myself here? You see, we all want to partake of this “life more abundantly” stuff that Jesus talks about. We want to serve our friends and ourselves some encouragement, healing, blessings, provisions and all that yummy stuff, but we want to do it without having to stir up the ingredients that release power in our prayers.

If I only half-heartedly followed my cookie recipe I am certainly not going to get the results I hoped for.

Illness was on my radar this week. I got really sick; I have many sick friends and have received several emails to pray for people with serious infirmities.  My tendency is to be annoyed at attacks like these, but not to do much more about it except say a little half hearted prayer as I go about my day. But this week I decided to allow myself to be stirred up!

I put my day on pause and began to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in prayer. I don’t know what to pray besides “heal us God”, so I rely on Him to give me relevant scriptures, and to bring me into agreement with God’s heart in prayer.

I allowed myself to feel emotions. I pushed past my apathetic laziness and declared those scriptures that the Holy Spirit gave me. I stirred these things up inside of me until my faith was strong and until it felt easier. And now I get to wait and see what GOOD things my prayers will produce. They are in God’s oven right now. He may ask me to check in on them again or He may just allow me to partake when He is finished.

What began as a difficult chore has become a sweet spot as I feast on the dough of the revelatory Word of God, and His presence. The fragrance of baking “cookies” fills the air.

Let’s get stirred up!

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/