the last few days i've spent immersed in an incredible experience of worship and teaching, called Catalyst...the focus this year was on the word "Reverb" and what effect can one person have on eternity, and what effect can thousands of people united in like purpose can do for the Kingdom of God...
there were so many nuggets of truth that I dare say I'll be writing about them for days but for today i choose a couple specific truths that liberated me from such old religious thinking and bondage that it is foremost on my heart...
i grew up in a good family, attended church but until my junior year of high school never really knew Him...my high school boyfriend Jim Turner sat me down in my living room one December evening and walked me through the gospel of salvation and my heart and eyes were opened like never before to the reality of my sinful life and the incredible love, forgiveness and grace of Christ. i accepted Him into my heart that night and that following weekend attended church with Jim where I was instructed to make a public confession of what I had done...I walked to the front of the massive sanctuary and prayed with someone briefly then returned to my seat where i was then instructed i needed to be baptized to make it "official" (ok, maybe that wasn't the exact words but you get the point) then the following weeks i struggled as i listened to message after message of "you need to be saved" when in my heart i was constantly thinking, i already did that, what is next, what now??? i attended a "discipleship" class that instructed me to write down my "testimony" of what God had done in my life...i struggled more because i wasn't one of those people that had this death to life transformation, i had never drank, or smoked, or robbed a bank, i had pretty much been a good person that just didn't know they needed a savior...that just didn't know i was separated from my creator that loved me so much He made a way for me to be with Him for all eternity...
well this weekend one of the speakers, Erwin McManus finally addressed that issue at a personal level to me - he basically said that he knew in a crowd of 11,000 christian leaders that most of us had probably never been a "bad" person, we had probably grown up in good homes with families that loved and nurtured us, and that with all well meaning religious instruction for us to "share our testimony" with others, that it was Ok that if our experience was uniquely our own...God intended it that way...
he also said that God understands our needs far more than we can even understand them ourselves...the followers of Jesus need to have permission to be human again... to just share their story, their own individual story, no formulas, no embellishments, but just our real life from our hearts; have we so distorted our minds and hearts (in the name of religion) that we accept life as it is and not as the life God desires for us?
the human spirit cannot live in falsehood; our souls are designed to live and flourish in the truth...the miracle of my story, my salvation is NOT that I have it all together, far from it, but that I'm broken, and I have struggles and I am human; and all those things are brought together by the Master, and designed for something beautiful, to allow other people to see His beauty in our brokenness and His healing...
Jeremiah 1:4
...before I formed you in the womb I KNEW YOU;
...before you were born I SET YOU APART...
amazing isn't it...i've heard those verses for years but now I get it, really get it...
in my parents eyes I may have been a surprise, but God needed me, I was created for His purpose - He needed me; and I have the very same spirit that raised Christ from the dead residing in me - little ol' me that thought she had no story, no value, nothing to say or to share...
I no longer believe I have nothing to say, but Christ in me does...
I no longer believe that I am not empowered for something greater...but I am empowered for His greatness and glory...
I no longer believe that I am not accountable for my minutes and days and years, but that every second of every day is designed for me to glorify Him...
