Beth Moore’s Sister, Gay

Do you guys read a lot of blogs?  I only read a few, and one of my favorites is Beth Moore’s and the team at Living Proof Ministries  I have grown so much listening to her teaching and going through her Bible studies with my good friends. So to hear the news from that organization a couple times a week is really fun.  I also participated in the scripture memory team this year, you memorize 24 scriptures(2 a month) all year.  I think she does it every other year, and it’s SO WONDERFUL.

One of the things I’ve been keeping up with lately on the blog is Beth’s sister, Gay.  She is/has been delivered from alcoholism and she’s sharing her story of what God has brought her from. It’s really really really really really amazing. When I read her words it is the picture of the ‘aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing’.  She’s such a sweet picture of that!

Here’s where you can keep up:

*Make sure you read Beth’s Intro on the first installment*

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Shape up or Ship out

If there is anything I used to fear  it was that I would disqualify myself from the Kingdom of God.  To most people the fear would be they would DO something that cause the God to shake his head in disappointment one last time and flick them out of the plan.  By the plan I mean, THE PLAN: the way this whole story and whole world and whole cosmos itself is happening.  The wild way that it is winding up to wind down. The big crash of cybols before the trumpet blow. The…the….uh, I ran out of drama.

There is really a lot that God is working in my life right now, so much so that I wish a thing or two would hit the back burner.  Also, I’m having bad dreams, fairly sure they are not from God, but from another unfriendly source. that guy never misses a beat.[eye roll]  One of the things that I feel the Holy Spirit bringing to my attention, though He is being quite subtle about it, is how the fear of ‘disqualification’ dropped it’s leaves when the pattern of performance left.  Bare branches left the feeling that I would not be enough myself, so though not imbedded in performance the fear still existed, but in my identity.   I seemed to have talked myself out of that nonsense in the book of Philippians.  But now it’s like I’m standing where the tree used to stand and seeing a stump…and roots. But you know what the root is….that I will not cooperate with the process.  That I will disqualify myself by being myself, choosing myself, loving myself. And believe me when I say I’m not worth it.   But it’s the Phillipians 3 thing all over again, the part where we’re told that God works in us to will and to do.  I just want to know how to cooperate for pete sakes!  I’m tired of kicking and screaming and not even realizing it till I’m out of breath. It’s like a toddler who doesn’t realize the fit isn’t working till the end of it. Then looks around at everything they tossed around and realizes they should have just sat still in the first place. I’m tired of fighting what I need to get what I want, and then realizing that I want is quite possibly what will poison me.  And more than ever I really get, deep in my head and deep in my spirit, that it is HIM I am really after. That He, Himself is what I actually need AND what I actually want,  But I keep chasing crap that looks shiny.

It’s ridiculous.

Now I get why in Matthew 9 Jesus makes a statement that leads me to believe that He considers the whole human race blind.  I get it because I have known for a long time that I am blind-unless I’m looking at my own reflection and then I see perfectly well. If it’s about me, I seem to be in to it.

Gross.

So…the tree roots.  I couldn’t even begin to guess what planted this seed and why they are there in the first place.  I have no perception of how deep they go, or how stubborn pulling it out will be.  But I’ve picked up a shovel and I’m ready for Christ to tell me where to start on the damn thing.  [Biblically, the root causes of fear have been damned and overcome in Christ]  It’s a bit like digging your own grave, which I have also been thinking a lot about.  Not literally my physical grave, that’s a little creepy, but that when God is done showing me how to let him dig out this root of fear that I can finally, at least in this area, be dead.  So be it!  I’m thrilled at the prospect of dying to myself, and what a new resurrected truth in this place could look like, what it could act like.  What a girl who is not intrinsically afraid of choosing herself over God and ruining it all could actually understand and know of God, what she could do, who she could approach with the same Truth.  I think this dying process is going to be strange though-more so than other things I have died to in the past.  I’m not a complete stranger to brokenness, but I in no way would belittle what other people have had broken. What? Like my stuff was more precious? Not quite.  The strangeness of it is that I don’t really know how to act.  Do I just be-bop around the same as I always have, when I’m fully, acutely, freshly aware of the digging and chopping going on inside.  How can I act ‘normal’ when my everyday ‘normal’ is terrified of being kicked to the curb.  What does the ‘inbetween’ between perfect love and fear that is in the process of being cast out, actually look like?  Do I still put on mascara every day? Feed the cat? Teach the Bible Study? …that’s the big one. Who cares what I have to say right now, I can only think clearly in a few areas.  Everything else is too bright to look at because God is all up inside of it.

Sigh Eye Roll. Pull Covers over head.

This is exactly my point…I want to be able to function well in the midst of dying to this old thing, when God seems not the least concerned with my functioning, but my living.  I don’t think he necessarily even cares how I act in the mean time, He knows I’m too dumbfounded to do anything too stupid, since I’m staring at Him anyway. Wondering why he chops so hard on some parts of the root, and tenderly removes the others.  He is mysterious, and He does things in this way that…that, makes you love Him and marvel at Him. He’s pretty irresistible to the soul.

 

And even be sad, Just to be glad, thinking of you [Thanks, Tony Bennett]

FACE FLAT

You’s Guys!  You’s gotta listen to this album-RIGHT NOW. It will make you fall on your face, which by the way, the artist taught me last week  is actually the way worship in the New Testament (of the Bible) is described.  Face flat. In the Old Testament it apparently means bow down, but in light of the Resurrection and this amazing Grace that seriously changes us when we just think about it….face flat.

Here’s the goods:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/god-king/id456285595

Look at these beautiful graphics! Did someone cut this with scissors?  I have kindergarten scissor cutting skills, so I am impressed with a 3-D Aslan and his crown.  

Favorite Song:  Love Has Done It.

I literally bought it from iTunes while he was singing it on stage.

Also, his testimony is ugly and then REALLY beautiful.  I don’t know how you could ever hear it, try to tweet him (@zachneese) and ask him if he has it written anywhere. God saved this man with pure genius!

Face flat. (I’m going to start saying this instead of saying everything God does is ‘amazing!’. Because everyone says ‘amazing!’ but what I’m really trying to say is that something slayed me, that I could not breathe it was so fabulous, that I fell down face first.)

Why I don’t really trust them…

There was recently an event, a happening.  In which, even if I squint as hard as humanly possible I can not get it out of my life.  It wasn’t about me, but it has definitely effected me. And that’s fine, because a long line at the grocery store effects me too, but this was more along the lines of the light post in the grocery store parking lot landing on your brand new car, and less like the long line. More like 2nd degree burns vs. hot cocoa when first sipped.  The thing about it is….I’m not up for talking about it.  Who wants to relive the crash of the light post?  I’m not one of ‘those’ people that changes my Facebook status when things happen.  I appreciate vague-ness because I can’t remember all the names of the people I went to High School with,(who are also Facebook friends) and I have to see them all next summer at the 10 year reunion, and what if they ask me about something of importance that I randomly sent into cyberspace with a few clicks on my keyboard? (inhale).

This happening is pretty public anyway, so why say anything?  Why mention it?  What  I’m really saying is…what would they think if I did talk? What explanation would I have to give that would keep them from jumping to false conclusions?  What could I leave out to protect myself, while still being ‘real’ and ‘transparent’?  Speaking of those words- why are they buzz words, what’s the deal with authenticity?  Do you REALLY want to be the ‘real’ you?  If you know Jesus and His light compared to your ‘real-ness’ I bet that you keep your mouth shut just as much as I do. The REAL me is actually righteousness and perfection, and lacking nothing…because the REAL me is hidden in Christ.  It’s just that I only believe that 1/2 the time, so only 1/2 the time is it a reality.  And that’s what I don’t trust people to keep in their minds when they know my business.  That line between what is TRUE and what is FACT and what is CIRCUMSTANCE. I guess that would be 3 lines.  What I’m talking about is CIRCUMSTANCE….but people take it as truth, and that gets messy.  Messy makes me grab a broom, start sweeping, and automatically defend myself and the TRUTH, or the FACT that supports the TRUTH.  And then I’m exhausted. Spent. And frankly, restentful.  I start ranting in my head about how ” I knew this would happen!” and “What did I expect from them anyway?!”

It’s not that I don’t want my friends and family to know, it’s that I don’t trust them to actually view it from my viewpoint or God’s viewpoint.  It’s that I know how judgmental I am at the end of the day, and I don’t want anyone to act how I might act towards them. (self-confession is good) I’m fully aware that this problem is my own, that there is no remedy for secret keeping in myself.  And secrets get heavy.  Really heavy.  Some people say it’s like having a rock in the bottom of your stomach, but to me, it feels a lot more like having a rock dangling above your head.  One wrong word, and what makes you function…stops.  I’ve felt the Lord say to me over and over again to let Him carry the weight of it, and I’m glad to do that. Glad to thrust that upon Him; it’s not like I want it hanging over me, like I don’t see the TRUTH or reason in casting it on Him.  It’s that He won’t handle it the way I want it handled right now.  It’s that God is not about protecting us from His glory, and in this case I my gut tells me that His glory must be very public, because the scheme (the falling light post) has been so public.  I don’t want His glory hidden or overshadowed by any means, but I feel a desperation to hide the havoc that Satan has wrought.  To blot it out, or at least cover it.  If less people know about it, then there is less attention to him, the world’s systems and it’s way of chewing up the innocent and slowly digesting them…less ammunition down the line for people to throw those same accusations around.  There is nothing like the spoken word, especially with the tone of pity behind it. It makes me queasy. Physically queasy.  It also makes me mad, and not the righteous indignation kind of mad, the ‘how would you like it if I dropped you off in the middle of the wilderness to fend for yourself, just as your words have done to me’ kind of mad.  And even in the middle of that, again, God’s truth about secrets surfaces.  I cannot protect myself.  He is my shield, and I only invite the enemy and his unusual strain of death when I turn to myself as the expected solution.  SO….in conclusion for all the TRUTH God has graced me with, I have to acknowledge that what has happened and the way it has happened has been quite public, and I’m not a big enough force to squelch it.  But because Hell has already been ransacked and it’s keys taken, and because my CIRCUMSTANCE involves one of God’s kids, and because Christ’s work on the cross is very finished, (and also very public) I am actually not locked into judgment, but freed into Glory.  And that glory shown on behalf of me will be very public, very prominent, and this event will share with what so many of our Christian brothers and sisters, the apostles and what Christ himself shared in.  Being cleared of any label or decree that the Kingdoms of the World might give us, and being proved and rewarded for what our deeds have really been, and Whose we really are.  This is a hope. And I’m reminded in the deepest way that Hope…..is a person.  He is a shield, an exceedingly great reward. And on Him I wait all the day long, for my hope…is Him.