The Long Ride Home

Three years ago if you had asked me what my dream was I would have said it was to some day have my own parish and serve as lead pastor. 

Today I realize exactly why it is so vital to trust God's plans over ours. 

Surrender has always been difficult for me. Although I believe in a God that moves mountains the size of continents just cause He can, I find it challenging to let go of my need for control. Yes, I am a self-diagnosed control freak. I am also an obsessive planner. I had my whole life planned at fifteen. (That was not a joke or an over exaggeration.) 

So when God says, "Lay your cares on me" I have learned to listen. 

Today I realize that God knew, better than I, that to be an indentured servant of a dysfunctional system would break my spirit and leave me emptied and bitter. 

I pondered all of this on my drive home from work today. 

I thought of how my radical Jesus came to a time where oppression was the norm and legalism had reached new heights. He came to a time where holiness was reached by being perfect on the outside and performing all the right deeds precisely as directed. 

My crazy, beautiful Jesus came to a cookie cutter religion and blew it out of the water. 

I could count on one hand the number of times its recording in the New Testament that Jesus taught within the synagogue walls. 

He showed that relationship with God very rarely happens within the walls of a designated place. More often we encounter God at the dinner table, the graveyard, the hillside or while we walk down the road. 

Not only this, but He looked at Peter (a fisherman with a tendency to put his foot in his mouth when he spoke turned disciple who still had a slight tendency to not be so tactful) and said to him "On this rock, I will build my church." (Matthew 16:18) 

He looked at a synagogue (the church of that day) and prophesied that it would be destroyed. (Which it was.)

Fast forward approximately 2,000 years. 

Now we have tried to shove Him back in a building. We've declared church is not church unless it takes place in the walls. 

And worse: We've declared that Christian is not Christian unless within the walls each Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. 

We've lost sight of the crazy, beautiful heart of Jesus. That wild One who was wholly God and wholly man who ate with thieves, made disciples out of fisherman and tax collectors and showed that God loves prostitutes where others would judge them. 

This is not me attacking the Church. 

This is me attacking the lie that the Church has bought into.

The lie that everything has to be done exactly as we say or it's wrong and ungodly. Sound familiar? We've made ourselves beautiful Pharisees and given up our true beauty as the reflection of a loving, powerful, redeeming God. 

The hardest true is this: before we can lift up the true image we're meant to bear, we first must break down the lies that have corrupted it. 

How?

I haven't the slightest. But I know it starts with surrendering our need for perfection and control so that we can be remade into the the true Ekklesia. 

The Redefining : My Extended Sabbath

I have spent the last few months on an extended Sabbath, or sabbatical as some may call it.

Before leaving my home church, for quite some time, I had been in a place where I went to church out of obligation, not enjoyment. I was burnt out. It was something I held close to my heart, hiding from the people I loved and served.

I spent my entire childhood waiting to become an adult. Now, at 23, married and in full time ministry with a full time job on the side to make ends meet: my only thought was "This is it? This is what I've waited for?"

I think everyone comes to this moment in adulthood.

Please understand that this inner struggle was just that: inner. It was hidden. That is, right up until October. When October came it became clear to me that "this" was definitely not it for me. It became apparent that I was out of place in what had been my home.

When you lose your ministry, your home church and leave your denomination of nine years there are many emotions that come into play during the healing process.

And that's exactly what the first month was: healing, because if we're being honest I was down right broken inside. I had been angry for quite some time. Frustrated. It felt as though nine years and $40,000 in debt for my Bachelor's had come to nothing. I worked for years in the hope of making myself into an acceptable "Preacher Lady" within my denomination.

Only to find there was nothing about me that was acceptable.

I was too unconventional. Too outside of the box. I believed too differently on open handed subjects that were never meant to make the rifts that we allow them to within the Bride of Christ.

The second month was one of letting go.

I let go of the notion that nine years meant loyalty. I let go of a good portion of my anger (and have to pick up forgiveness every day) for the hurt that I've experienced in this process.

Now, in the third month, I realize what all of this has been for: a redefining.

The Spirit is redefining what "church" is to me, I believe in an effort to help me see what it's always been meant to be. Did you know the Greek word used by Jesus and all the New Testament writers when they spoke of The Church is a word that simply means a gathering of believers?

When we look up the word there is no mention whatsoever of a building or a steeple.

Yet when we go to other countries to be missionaries we "build churches"? Instead of teaching them to value themselves and one another as the body and bride of Christ, we teach them: you need a building to be valid.

Awesome.

Now we wonder why people in America don't want to hear what we have to say? Maybe because they recognize the false doctrine in that teaching. They realize when what they're hearing in a lie. Yes, even those not "saved" can recognize truth. To believe otherwise is foolish and ignores the fact that we are made in God's image. Even if a mirror is damaged, we still call it a mirror.

But more importantly, God is redefining my calling.

At 16 when He revealed to me that my calling was to be a pastor I was terrified. Not only did I hate speaking publicly, but I was awfully unpolished. However, as I have come to learn God chooses the unpolished to use. (Moses was a slow speaker, Peter had a habit of putting his foot in his mouth when he spoke, Paul persecuted Christians, many of the disciples had no education besides how to fish.)

Maybe to be a pastor there doesn't have to be a podium. (THANK GOD!)

Maybe it means, like it meant for Peter, to be a fisher of men.

Blessings,
B.

Sing Blessings in Darkness

I have written my salvation story many times. To those who will hear and read it, I pray God was able to use my story to help you in yours.

It is high time for the community of believers to start acting like a community by helping one another out. 

So here is an exert of my life:

I was not raised in church. 

This would probably explain a great deal of my not so traditional quirks. 

I was the last of three children and 8 years younger than my brother who came before me. So as you can imagine as a child I was quite spoiled. My father, who was born right after the depression, grew up poor. He always says, "I want you to have what I never could." 

When I was five years old the fragile damn that held my family together broke. My father (who was a retired marine - 28 years - who was used to no talking back) beat my brother so badly my mother barely recognized him in the morning. 

We left my father's house and spent the next 3 years living on peanut butter sandwiches, Ramon and macaroni and cheese. To say it was a difficult time would be an understatement. Each person in my family responded to the negative events in their own way. 

Being young and completely lost in the new paradigm of my broken family, I developed serious anxious and depression. 

But the worst was yet to come. 

Just when things seems to be restoring themselves (my parents remarried - after much redemptive work on God's part and a miracle) my mental and emotional state broke. I developed PTSD after losing too much too fast and having to grow up too quickly. 

At fourteen I was a depressed, self abusing girl who felt like my soul had fallen into a pit. I felt that no one could reach me. 

I still remember the first time my parents noticed the marks on my arm: they threatened to place me in a mental health facility if the behavior continued. 

I came to know Christ not because of an organization, but because Christ helped me to see and understand how much He loved me. He showed me in a moment sitting, bored out of my mind, in a church pew my mother forced me to sit in, that He loved me where I was. His love had always been there waiting for me to call out of my darkness to Him. 

So when I said in my video blogs this past week or so that I understand a dark night of the soul it was not pomp and circumstance. I know what it is to feel unloved. I know what it is to feel dead inside. To feel unreachable and alone. 

To those of you who have experienced depression or are in the midst of a bout of it: know that you do not walk those dark corridors alone.

The best lie that the Empire and the enemy can make us believe is that we are alone. If we are alone, we are easily defeated.

Always remember that where you walk, not only have brothers and sisters in the faith walked before you, but the God of all creation made Himself a man do that He could walk that road as well.

Christ meets us in the midst of our worst seasons of life and breaths life, light and restoration into us. I know that though everything we face Christ stands beside us waiting for us to call out to Him. He does not stand afar off. Scripture teaches us that the Spirit of God (Holy Spirit) is the one who comes along aside us. 

God never leaves us alone in the wilderness. He teaches us that He will sustain us always.

God never leaves us alone in the storm. Instead He given us the peace to withstand it.  

God never leaves us alone in the darkness. He lets us know, He is the light and warmth in our cold loneliness. 

So regardless of what season you may be facing, always remember the God who is with us. The God who meets His people where they are instead of waiting for them to get better. No, He wants us even at our worst. He loves us unconditionally.

"We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life." (‭1 John‬ ‭5‬:‭9-12‬ NIV)

So when the darkness comes, sing blessings. Because as a beautiful soul (Mandisa) said as a concert I attended recently: "When you choose to bless the Lord in the middle of your darkness, the people around you listen." Also, "When we worship in our pain, God doesn't just set us free, He sets others around us free."

Don't just be a worshipper that blesses the Lord: Be a worshipper who does not depend on circumstance to worship, but who worships when it makes no sense and who's worship sets others free.

Because in the end, that's what we all truly desire and need: to love, be loved and experience true freedom.

Blessings,
B.