Redeeming Your Past

These past couple of months, I have been reading through the book Captivating with the ladies from my church. It has been a heart wrenching study. The statistics say that in most churches, ¼ women have been abused in some way. Well, on any given week, I sit in a circle of 8-10 women, each one an abuse victim. I want to add that this group was not designated as a “Recovery Group” or anything of the sort. The small group is named and advertised as a “Ladies Bible Study”. Sobering.

I say all that to say that if you have read Captivating, you know it walks women through the somewhat painful process of recognizing wounds, facing wounds, and healing from wounds. Week after week, women shared their stories. Dark stories. Stories that left me emotionally drained. I praise God, however, that the stories were shared. Satan loses his power to accuse and shame when the truth is brought to the light. God’s Truth can then penetrate the pain and set the wounded free!

This is our final week in the study (I am a little relieved…we need to move on, amen?!). However, I have discovered a couple of interesting insights as we have worked through this study that I want to list really quickly and hit on in-depth later…

1. Our wounds are a sort of baggage that we carry and use as a form protection in the way of justification for certain behaviors. Let that sink in for a second. God’s responsibility is to open our eyes to our wounds; our responsibility is to deal with our wounds (read “Living Wounded or With our Wounds”). We deal by either carrying them around with us as a sort of justification for “why I am the way I am”; or, we acknowledge the hurt and the pain and then deal with the wound Biblically: through forgiveness (read “Forgive, Forgiving, Forgiven”). I don’t have to tell you which of the above two options is more emotionally taxing and physically exhausting…you already know.

2. “Security is not found in the absence of danger, but in the presence of Jesus.” We allow our wounds to define us out of fear. We are afraid. “Your lingering disbelief that anything important hangs on your life is only evidence of the long assault on your heart by the one who knows who you could be and fears you.” Who is this “one”? Satan. He is a liar (John 8) and he is out to destroy you (1 Peter 5). If he can get you to believe that you are safer carrying around your wounds, if he can convince you that you are worthless because of your wounds, if he can talk you into believing you will never experience healing from your wounds, he has destroyed you and won. The only way to defeat him is to draw near to Jesus…preach the Gospel to yourself. Remember He died for you, He forgives you, He loves you, He wants you.

3. To redeem our past, we must believe in the transcendence of God. Some of us really struggle with looking back. Hindsight isn’t only 20/20, it sucks. Trust me, I know. However, I have to say this…I was talking with Bryant the other day and he said, “Nicole, can’t you look back though and see that God has been with you every step of the way? He was there…He was leading…He has brought you to this point.” I have to be honest…I don’t always like to think that God was present at every moment in my past, some of it is embarrassing and I wish He wasn’t looking and some of it is so painful I am angry He didn’t step in. But, when I stop for a second and think about where He has me now and when I dwell on all of the blessings He has brought into me life (not because of what I have done, obviously, but because of Who He is), I can’t help but stand amazed and grateful. Have I always been able to say that? No. Healing is a process. I am still in the process, as I am sure you are too. We are moving forward. But, and there are a lot of “buts”, God is with us…right here…right now. You may not see Him, feel Him, hear Him, or believe Him, but I promise you…He is there. Cling to the facts…keep moving forward. Don’t look back until God lets you know it is time…when will that be? I don’t know…He does and He will make it clear to you. In the meantime, just keep telling yourself, “God is here and He loves me.” Simple statements, powerful truths.

Teen Dating: Teaching Rules or the Gospel?

I was asked to write a blog defining certain terms related to teenage dating. I am a little nervous to address this topic because I am pretty sure that my perspective is going to be very different than most. But, I was asked and this is my blog, so here goes! J

First, the hair stands up on the back of my neck whenever I am asked to “define terms”, because usually the only reason why we want a clear definition is so we can slap it down on someone as a rule. Rules are much easier to delineate to students. Why? Because rules are black and white and safe. However, rules are the reasons our students are flocking away from the church in epidemic numbers. They are sick of being told what to do, especially when what they are told flies in the face of culture and doesn’t make sense.

Now, a little caveat here: If we are living lives according to Scripture, we will be counter-cultural. However, it won’t be because we are following a list of rules. Culture follows rules. Think about it: rules of dress, rules of interaction, rules of business, marriage, buying and selling. Rules are not the answer. An intimate relationship with Jesus Christ is the answer. But we don’t teach that. Why? Because grace is dangerous. If we are more concerned about teaching our students the implications of the fact that Jesus Christ lives inside of them and is their life, then they will make the right decisions in their dating lives, and in every other aspect of their lives for that matter.

However, if you teach grace, your teens may slip up. What do we do? What Jesus did…remind them of the Prodigal Son…God still wants an intimate relationship with them.  God still pursues them. God still accepts them. They are still forgiven, cleansed, and in fellowship with God.

Our students don’t need rules or definitions. They need the Gospel. What is the Gospel? Jesus Christ took our sin and God’s wrath upon Himself. All of our sin: past, present, future. All of God’s wrath. Everything. Jesus Christ paid it all. When I accepted His payment for my sin, the Bible says Christ comes to live inside of me. When God looks at me, He sees Jesus. He sees righteousness, perfection, wholeness. Therefore, it would be unjust of God to be angry with me or to punish me for something that was taken care of 2000 years ago by His Son. More than that, He cannot disown or be out of fellowship with His Son. So, He does not disown or shun me when I sin. He runs to me. He wants me to see that what I chose over Him can never satisfy or love me the way He does. My sin makes Him more attractive.

That is your job as a youth leader: Make Jesus attractive. I can go ahead and tell you right now that as a whole, we are doing a poor job of this. Our rules and lists are suffocating our students. Jesus never suffocated His followers. He loved them. He patiently taught them truth, yes. However, He was gracious when they failed. We need to allow Him to express His life through us so our students get the Gospel.

One more thing: I am not saying not to give guidelines. But, ask yourself this: Am I glorifying rules or Jesus? The answer to that question will tell you everything you need to know.

Crowd Participation

So I need some crowd participation...Read the following two question "Quiz" (I would've called it "Questionnaire", but I am a teacher..."Quiz" is much more up my alley) and then leave your answers and thoughts in the "Comments" box. FYI...I am not looking for the "right" answers. I am looking for honest answers. How you answer the next two questions will tell you everything you need to know about your relationship with God. I never knew the power of these questions until I was forced to face and to answer them myself. Humble yourself...be vulnerable...and then watch God work.

Ready? Okay...

What do you believe God thinks about you?
a. I am simply a sinner saved by grace.
b. He loves me because He has to, but I am more of a disappointment to Him than anything else.
c. He is constantly frustrated with me because I can't get it right.
d. He loves me unconditionally, accepts me, and views me as He views His Son, Jesus.
e. Other (you tell me).

The following would describe my relationship with God:
a. I am working really hard to make Him proud of me.
b. I am constantly searching my heart looking for anything that could interrupt fellowship with God and cause Him to need to punish me.
c. I am resting in His grace.
d. I am trying to prove to Him that I am good enough for Him to love.
e. I am working really hard to be godly, because after all, isn't that the way I thank Him for sending His Son to die for me?

Go ahead...leave me a comment. Let me know. Don't give me the "This is what the Bible says but I don't believe it" answer. Give me your honest, gut level thoughts.

I'll go first...

The answer to the first question would have been "a" and "c". Answer to the second question: "b", "d", and "e".

Scripture vs. Intimacy

So I was reading in Grace Walk this morning and I was just blown away. I read this statement: “A grace perspective lets us see the commands not as obligations, but as opportunities for the life of Christ to be revealed through us…Set free by grace, we don’t face the commandments with self-condemnation, but with spiritual anticipation that Jesus Christ will reveal His life in us.” The author goes on to say that when Jesus was asked by a religious leader (and I never stopped to fully think that through…a religious leader, who was concerned with making sure he did everything right spiritually, was the one who asked Jesus) what the greatest commandment was (or what his main focus should be in order to be “successful”), Jesus answered with Mark 12:30-31. Jesus didn’t say to “be holy as I am holy” or “to meditate on Scripture day and night”. No, He said to fall more in love with Him. Wow.

Then the author discussed the role of the Bible in the “grace walk”. He said we are taught that the way to fight temptation is by quoting Scripture. However, he said as a young man, Scripture alone was not enough to empower him to say no to lust. He would memorize, recite, and carry around verse cards to no avail. He explains, “The Bible is a weapon against the powers of darkness. However, it isn’t possible to recite verses to the devil and expect him to run in fear…As you abide in Christ moment by moment, your love for Him will enable you to resist temptation by the power of His life within you.”

I started thinking through Scripture…and I thought of James 4. James explains that the way to resist Satan is to “draw near to God”. James doesn’t say anything about memorizing Scripture. He writes about pursuing an intimate relationship with Jesus. Satan is intimidated by intimacy with Jesus because Jesus is the only person Satan is not able to conquer. Don't forget...Satan can quote Scripture. He uses Scripture. Interesting.

Secondly, I thought of 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 where Paul is writing about the “messenger of Satan” sent to torment him. He didn’t get rid of the demon through Scripture memorization or recitation. Jesus didn’t even tell him to handle the situation that way. What is the answer? God’s grace. Intimacy with Jesus. Wow.

I am just marinating in that right now because it is blowing up everything I have held to for a while. The way I deal with my struggles and failures is not by “doing” anything. I can’t memorize enough, read enough, serve enough, or say no enough. If I could, that would fly in the face of the Gospel. Why? Because doing something means I am relying on myself, not my Savior.

I have made a tool an idol. God's Word is a tool, a weapon. Intimacy with Jesus, allowing Him to express His life through me, brings the power.

I am learning to come to Him in honest surrender, instead of doing more Bible studies and projects for victory and healing, I am praying prayers like, “Jesus, I am getting defeated time and time again. I am struggling to give up this particular sin. I want You, but in honesty, I want this thing too. You live inside of me. You deal with it. I am trusting You for victory.”

I want to dare you to pray that way. It is revolutionizing.

Dear Moms and Daughters...

My mom and I :)

Chapter 10 of the book Captivating deals with mother/daughter relationships. Stasi Eldredge explains the conflict between mothers and daughters in the first few pages of the chapter.

Mothers tend to believe (even sub-consciously) that their daughters are extensions of themselves. So, if the daughter strays from or does something different than what she has been taught by her mother, the mother experiences confusion, pain, disappointment. Ironically, daughters desperately want to please their mothers, but they also want to develop into their own persons. So, tension develops.

Satan is really clever. He plays on mothers’ insecurities and baggage. He convinces them that if their daughters don’t turn out a particular way, the mom is to blame. Consequently, mothers tend to be very controlling. They ultimately want what is best for their daughters, which they believe is different than what their moms gave them. They are terrified of feeling like a failure with their daughters.

Daughters react to this control. They want to be seen and invited. They want to be seen for who they are as individuals and invited to be themselves. However, remember, moms, out of fear, tend to be controlling because if the daughter is left to be herself, what if she does something stupid? Does that mean the mom failed? So, I repeat: Tension develops.

We cannot forget that we are all born with a sin nature and this sin nature gets passed down from generation to generation. Our parents are prone to certain sins due to their parents’ sin natures. So, it is safe and logical to say that a daughter will inherent some baggage from her mother’s sin nature. Please realize I am not blaming the mother. Honestly, some of you moms should breathe a sigh of relief. You put so much pressure on yourself to be the “perfect mother” and beat yourself up now that your daughter is grown and you see some of your sinful tendencies in her life. You feel as though you have failed. You haven’t. In case you have forgotten, you are human, so you have a sin nature, as does your daughter. She will fail, not because you failed, but because she is a sinner. The fact that she is a sinner makes her in desperate need of the Savior. This is the Gospel 101.

Here’s the thing: Mothers and daughters have baggage. Couple that to the tension that already exists between mothers wanting their daughters to succeed and daughters wanting to be their own persons. Is it any wonder, then, why we need healing in our relationships? We are all in the same boat. I don’t care how amazing you or your mom is (and I am sure you both are…my mom is awesome), but you have to work through stuff…in both of your lives.

How do you go about doing this? First, you stop blaming your mom for your sin (because this is where the healing starts: looking into your past, discovering your baggage, and dealing with it). You have a sin nature. Even if your mom would have been the “world’s best”, you would still have crap to deal with in your own life. However, you realize that as a woman, you have “life” to offer. If you are a believer, you have Christ’s life to offer. Because Christ lives in you, you have the victory over sin. Instead of focusing on your baggage, which will only lead to self-medication and death (Romans 8), focus on Christ by abiding in Him, obeying His commandments, and acting in faith (taken from Grace Walk). Notice what comes first though: abiding in Him. What does abiding mean?

Abiding means that you realize that you don’t have to do anything at all to convince God to love you. If you never read your Bible or prayed again, if you never lead another Bible study or discipled another person, God would still love you, accept you, and yearn for intimacy with you. He is not surprised or disappointed by your failures. He forgave you and your shortcomings 2000 years ago (refer to my “Don’t Ask for Forgiveness” blog). You are righteous and worth Jesus Christ to God. Just enjoy Him and His presence. When you do this, you will obey automatically. But obedience divorced from love is religion and detestable to God (a.k.a. Pharisaical).

So when you are abiding in Christ, you have the life of Christ to offer to other people…specifically your mom. You may not realize this, but if you are feeling unloved, unaccepted, or hurt, then your mom probably is too. Wow. That’s tough. Again, Satan is clever and pits mothers and daughters against each other, deceiving them into believing that their particular sin is the others’ fault. We have sin because of our sin natures, and we inherited our sin nature ultimately from Adam and Eve.

Praise Jesus the Second Adam offers grace, peace, and restoration.

Mom, I love you and respect you with all of my heart. Thank you for modeling how to be an incredible, creative, loving, gentle, faithful mother and a supportive, adoring, constant, stable wife. You are an inspiration and an example to me. I love you for who you are, not what you do. I thank you for how you have raised me and protected me. You are the woman!!! J

Don't Ask for Forgiveness

I am reading Grace Walk by Steve McVey and it is tearing me up...in an awesome way! Today, he was explaining the story of the Prodigal Son and he says this: "I used to believe that this parable was a lesson on forgiveness; but studying it from a grace perspective makes its meaning clear. It's not about forgiveness, but about acceptance."

McVey goes on to explain that the Prodigal felt unworthy because of his rebellious, sinful behavior. He figured his father would only be interested in having his son back as a servant. However, "the story clearly demonstrates that the father had already forgiven him and was ready to fully accept him when he returned home."

We have misrepresented God's forgiveness. When Jesus Christ died on the cross for my sins 2000 years ago, all of my sins were future...right? Let me help you out here...YES! I am only 26. "God didn't deposit forgiveness into an account with my name on it so that I can make forgiveness withdrawals when I need it. When I was born again, He emptied the entire forgiveness account on me! My debt was paid in full!"

And the same is true for you!

1 John 1:9 has been misinterpreted. The word that we have translated as "forgiveness" was "confession" in the original Greek, which means "to agree with". Let me boil this down for you: When you sin, you don't need to ask for forgiveness. Biblically, God has already forgiven you (Jesus died for your sins: past, present, future). Confession means that you "acknowledge the foolishness of disobedience to the Father and then praise Him that you are already forgiven and accepted by Him."

For years I believed that when I sinned, I had to ask forgiveness from God, otherwise a breach would remain in our relationship because He was not happy with me and wouldn't be happy until I realized my sin and cleansed myself of my sin. Do you see how opposed to grace this belief system is? "If Satan can cause you to feel that God doesn't accept you because of bad behavior, he can keep you [far away from God] for a longer time." And this happened to me. I got Galatians 5:16 reversed. I thought I had to clean myself up before I could walk in the Spirit. So, I would stay focused on my sin...doing deep personal analyzation, trying to cleanse myself of my sin by staring it in the face. Only years later did I realize that I was "setting my mind on the flesh, which is death" (Romans 8:6). Freedom from sin does not happen by obsessively thinking and willing myself free...it comes from choosing to believe I am accepted, forgiven, and righteous before God. He loves me, wants me, and pursues me. I can enjoy Him. I can walk in the Spirit and as I do, He will do His work in me. I do nothing. How awesome!

With God, my behavior does not determine my identity. He has already declared my identity is Jesus Christ. I will choose to believe that and as a result, live in victory. Or, I will choose to continue to believe I am just a sinner saved by grace and destined to struggle with sin the rest of my life. The only problem is, "God never intended for the Christian life to be a struggle."

Jason Gray has an amazing song entitled, "I am New". I will leave you with the lyrics.

Now I won't deny
The worst you could say about me
But I'm not defined
By mistakes that I've made
Because God says of me

I am not who I was
I am being remade
I am new
I am chosen and holy
And I'm dearly loved
I am new

Who I thought I was
And who I thought I had to be
I had to give them both up
Cause neither were willing
To ever believe

I am not who I was

Too long I have lived
In the shadows of shame
Believing that there
Was no way I could change
But the one who is making everything new
Doesn't see me the way that I do
He doesn't see me the way that I do

I am new
Dead to the old man

I'm coming alive
I am new

Forgiven beloved
Hidden in Christ
Made in the image of the Giver of Life
Righteous and holy
Reborn and remade
Accepted and worthy this is our new name

This is who we are now...

Perverting Grace

So I am going to get up on a soap box here for a second and rant and rave J. Nothing new.

I am frustrated with the fact that so many times we, as believers, expect unbelievers to follow the Bible. What? No!

We are shocked when they buy into our cause, but not our creed. We are disappointed when their morals diverge from ours. We are worried when they disagree with our perspective.

But I guess I am not sure why that surprises us? I mean, why would they follow a belief system that they don’t believe in? Seems kinda illogical.

So here’s my thing. Instead of being overwhelmed with unbelievers' choices and instead of being shocked over their lack of submission to the Bible, be concerned for their souls. We are wasting so much energy being anxious about behavior, we are missing the point of the Gospel: Grace. Jesus never went after people's conducts until He dealt with their destinies. Think of the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the Rich Young Ruler (RYR). At first glance, you may think Jesus is dealing with their behavior. But He’s not. Read John 4 and 8 and Luke 18 again. They bring up their lifestyles. So, Jesus hears them out, highlights their need for God, and offers them grace. After they accept His grace, He says, “Go and sin no more”. However, when the RYR refuses His grace, Jesus sadly watches him walk away. He doesn’t yell after him: “Well, keep following the commandments buddy. You got that going for ya!” No way. Why not? Because to highlight behavior, or following a code of rules, is completely contrary to the Gospel and to grace. We tend to forget that…even in our own lives. Grace means I don’t follow a list of do’s and don’ts…it means I develop a relationship with Jesus. That's what Jesus was after: Relationships. Guilt and condemnation don't build healthy relationships (Romans 7). Grace does.

We have perverted grace and have pushed people further from Jesus, instead of drawing them to Him.