When I returned from two years overseas in summer 2013, I was relieved that I had a definite next step - and what an amazing next step it was. After being back in the States only two weeks, I loaded up in the van in West Texas with the other UT BSM staff and interns and headed to Glorieta, New Mexico. It was incredible to see how God's plan had unfolded - how my family at UT had welcomed me back as someone who could be there for students who were where I'd been just a few years before. I was excited to help others navigate through the murky waters I'd waded through in those couple years and months leading up to graduation, excited to help other young women find their joy.
Another part of my incredible job was the travel and working with a group of others with a heart for God and a heart for the nations, others who knew exactly where I was because they had also just returned from overseas. What a joy it was to go all around the country with them, stirring God's Kingdom dreams in the hearts of students, praying with them, encouraging them, planting seeds in their heads and hearts - from South Carolina to Arkansas to California.
I'd had some culture shock at the beginning, especially when at Glorieta surrounded by thousands of college students, worshiping God with Charlie Hall and great acoustics and loud noise and lights when I had been used to ten people huddled around a ukulele in a home. But I ran outside and walked among the rocks and the trees and talked with Jesus, and He brought me through those weeks. Altogether, my transition was incredibly smooth.
But as 2014 rolled around, it became more and more apparent that I was running on steam.
By January, I realized I'd been...I guess...expecting something from God, in return for my "hard work," and He hadn't pulled through. He hadn't kept His promises. Instead, I was recovering from a bit of heartache, my body kept being sick and nothing I did could help and treatments seemed like money down the drain, and I felt the river of the Holy Spirit drying up inside me as I found no joy in ministry. When I looked at the future, where I had once seen dreams of what could be, instead I saw "a gaping black hole." That's actually the phrase I used when talking with a dear friend and mentor. A 25-year-old woman with all the advantages in the world seeing a gaping black hole when she looked at the future.
My dreams had been replaced by the grim reality that I was barely breaking even financially, that whatever goals I had for the future had to be deferred as long as my body was sick and out of control, that I didn't truly feel part of a community no matter how much I wanted to be.
I kept going, though, because deep down I still loved the Lord, even though I had told him angrily, "I'm through doing stuff for you!" And because there were so many people I loved. But I realized I was sure of just about nothing anymore. Nothing came guaranteed. Nothing could be controlled. Not health, not finances, not love, not the future.
and that's scary.
Not long after that low point, the Lord reminded me that so many others knew what it was like. So many have gone through times in which they loved the Lord, believed He did have a good plan for their lives...but can't understand why that plan, seemingly, hasn't been manifesting...or perhaps why their perspectives have altered so much that we hadn't been able to see His goodness and feel Him right next to them all along the road.
I was reminded to stop worrying about what I could "do" for God...and not to feel guilty about it. To enjoy a play because it was brilliantly scripted and superbly acted. To appreciate world-class violin just for its own sake. To take walks not for the sake of coaxing a "divine appointment," finding someone downtrodden to pray over and encourage...but just take a walk because I enjoyed it and because nature is beautiful.
I was afraid. I was afraid that if I started enjoying life for what it was and not measuring my performance by people's response or what I said or did to help them, maybe God would be angry. Maybe He would withhold blessing from me, or worse, His very presence. I felt guilty sometimes.
Fear and guilt...didn't Jesus come to set us free from those things?
Religion is funny.
Maybe if I had to sum 2014 up in one phrase, it was the year I was freed from religion.
I decided I needed a break from ministry. I needed a break from having to be "on" all the time and fake a joy that I didn't feel all that often. So I got a job coordinating Work-Travel program participants from around the world. Here are just some of the adventures I had:
1. Comforting a Ukrainian student at the hospital who had to have surgery after a fist fight with another Ukrainian
2. Trying to help two Chinese girls have fun in Austin when they were stuck cleaning rooms by themselves in a hotel down south, with no means of transportation except if they walked 3/4 mile to the bus stop
3. Inspecting the apartments of Turkish students who somehow managed to break the lid of the commode in half and mark up all the wooden furniture in 2 weeks
4. Having to explain to a Thai student what is appropriate and inappropriate for someone to say to him, and explaining that remarks someone made at an airport to him were very inappropriate...giving him the human trafficking hotline number for future situations
During that time of rest from ministry, I was processing a lot. I talked with a friend about the lack of power I'd felt...that I felt I was doing my part, but God wasn't showing up - either in my life or the lives of others. She reminded me that God was not holding anything back from me, and that He'd already given me everything I needed. I remembered times I had felt this, this deep intimacy apart from any works I could do. I had felt it sporadically throughout my life...I longed to feel it consistently.
I also learned about the healing power of God, which I have talked about in other posts. Through study of Scripture and through the guidance of the Spirit, I had come to believe that the best posture was simply taking Jesus at His word and not trying to explain away his radical promises or post-resurrection grace, even if they directly conflicted with my reality. And so as the physical symptoms roared, I would fight back with Scripture. Sickness is caused by a number of things, but I definitely believe there was a spiritual component to mine. I kept saying that I was through, that I'd had enough, that Jesus had already paid for my healing and it was going to manifest. It wasn't even an option anymore that it wouldn't. It wasn't even an option that it would drag on. And I kept that relentless hope in the face of reality. And I would not give in.
And I still don't give in. When symptoms of any kind appear, I do the same thing. When I go to a banquet and eat lasagna because that's the only option, I give thanks for that food, even the gluten and lactose, and thank God that my body will digest it well - and I don't give up on that conviction, even when my stomach begins to hurt (an application of 1 Corinthians 10). I don't give up faith, and the pain leaves. When I spend a day substitute teaching for 4th graders who are coughing all over the place, I thank God for safety from the flu that I know is trying to take my body down. And as the vicious condemnations come to mind - "Are you sure God really wants to preserve you from even that? That's just part of life!" and "God doesn't want to do that for you! You're not even one of his top servants! He would only deliver the Peters and Pauls from sickness!" - I feel equipped to answer them, as I believe more than ever in the finished work of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the reliability of the Word of God. I realize this raises some difficult questions, ones that I do not have space to explore in this post. But am I convinced that we should never feel condemnation or guilt in believing for healing, even for minor aches or a cold? Even that God is very pleased with that kind of faith? That God's will is to bless and not harm us? Yes.
I also began to no longer consider it an option that I could be motivated by fear or guilt, that there was still condemnation remaining for me in some way. Before, I think that aspect of faith had been ambiguous for me, as I had listened to law and condemnation and fear and guilt mixed with grace and truth so often in sermons and messages. Now I truly took Romans 8:1 to heart, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus - and believed that it was not only for eternity but also here and now. That God was not frowning if I failed to share the gospel with someone. That he was not waiting in the wings to punish me if I slipped up. That he was not going to inflict me with some sickness or hardship to "teach me a lesson." That in Christ I am completely perfect and completely one with the Lord - it was not something I had to strive for, but something I had already attained. That he was not withholding any good thing from me and has already bestowed unimaginable, unmerited favor. That when something good happened to me, it was not just a "test" and God was not waiting with a string to yank it away if I didn't respond appropriately. It is the unconditional love of a good Father who enjoys blessing His children.
I moved to Granbury to live with my wonderful grandmother and her adorable fluffy dog Molly. I was troubled in my spirit as I went, wondering why I was going to seminary, and yet I knew it was what I needed to do. I began praying for God to provide a church that would confirm what He had been teaching me and encourage it. After prayer and an internet search, I found one, and when I went the first Sunday morning, was amazed that they taught love and grace and not condemnation and that it was a house church (I still haven't quite felt as comfortable as I used to in big churches). After the service, I told the pastor and his wife about my health problems and my journey, and they joined in encouraging me to keep believing for healing over my body and have confidence that Jesus had already granted it to me. They spoke of the Jesus I know. They spoke of a Jesus who had brought a stillborn infant of a woman in the church back from the dead, who had healed the pastor of ALS when he looked straight at the doctor after the diagnosis and said, "No, I do not have ALS; the Lord told me He has yet more for me here." This Jesus had healed multiple people of alcoholism - yes, people in the church, who joyfully boasted of the grace and healing of Christ in their lives and were unashamed.
This resonated with my soul, as I had thought, Yes...I knew He was like this. Somehow, in the middle of all the guilt and condemnation and fear and law...I always knew.
And just like that, I went cold turkey off of a bunch of expensive supplements that I'd been dependent on for almost a year. It was just a few months before, in January 2014, that my body had gone totally haywire and I was on the couch for hours a day in pain, curled up into a ball or throwing up. But in August 2014 I told God, "I'm taking You up on Your promises. My body cannot afford this anymore, my bank account cannot afford this anymore, and when symptoms start to come back I will not listen to them but will listen to You instead. And as I take my eyes off of the symptoms and fix them furiously and intently on You and Your goodness and power instead, I know they will fade away and my healing will manifest." And it did.
One of my favorite things someone said during this time of learning was that the hard message to preach is actually the message of grace. If you want an easy message, preach judgment and condemnation. That is what "itching ears" want to hear. That is the religious spirit - the spirit of the law that still pervades the world and keeps so many locked in its fearful grip. You're not good enough, it says. God is still angry at you if you mess up. You need to do this and this and this to make it right, it says. The religious spirit always takes you out of the Holy Spirit and back into the flesh trying its best to please God when it simply cannot (Romans 8...just all of it).
I used to think fighting the fight, keeping the faith and all that had to do with not "tripping up." But our spirits cannot become any more or less righteous once they have been made one with Jesus. We have been called the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, and that gift has been bestowed freely on us. The difficult thing to do is not to appear perfect - that's actually quite easy to do, and it certainly doesn't take a Jesus lover to be able to do that - but rather to keep believing in the impossible when the world and even much of the church shouts you down. It takes faith to believe God is immeasurably good and over-abundantly gracious when we are told He stands like a surly judge, holding scales to weigh the good and bad. It takes faith to believe grace wasn't a loan that you have to pay back with interest in the form of tons of good works. It takes faith to believe in His provision when you are watching your finances dwindle. It takes faith to believe a word He has spoken over you (holy...righteous...kind...gentle...patient) when you are still not behaving that way. It takes faith to believe you are already healed and keep declaring that truth when symptoms are still manifesting. It takes faith to tell someone the word that the Holy Spirit is speaking to you, and to actually believe it is from Him.
Faith can do what religion never could.
It is a fight of faith to believe in God's goodness, power, and dreams in the face of physical "reality." But that's okay, because He comes through time and time again. It is not even a matter of waiting for Him to come through; it is a matter of believing He already has, and joyfully anticipating that manifestation. Waiting excitedly to see just how He does it. Practically jumping up and down, like a child on Christmas morning...knowing that the present is already there under the tree but simply waiting until He tells you it's time to unwrap it.
I am not waiting for healing...I am whole and complete in Christ.
Whatever my bank account looks like, I am not poor, and I have no lack...I am completely provided for in Him. And because I am not under the law, His provision or lack thereof does not depend on good works that I do.
However radical and crazy my giving looks, I can laugh and keep giving and giving...knowing that His abundance will supply my every need.
There is no separation...Jesus and I are one. Jesus is in me, and I am in Him. Even when I sin, He is still equally in me and with me. The Holy Spirit never leaves.
His acceptance is not conditional...He is not waiting for you to do anything. He has already done it all. He has accepted you just as you are, and you don't need to change, you don't need to become better, either before or after believing. All you have to be able to accept is that He has already accepted you, and rejoice in your Abba, Provider, companion, and friend.
He has finished the work. Rest in Him.
