questions

Cairo's fiancee asked if i'd be willing to answer a series of questions for a class he was taking a year ago. i sort of feel like anytime someone asks about your relationship with God, you should probably take the time to answer, so i did. These questions often only allow you to see how a person feels in just a snapshot of a moment - this was 'where i was at'... But it's a valuable exercise both to ask these types of questions, & also to answer them... When i found this post in my drafts folder, i decided i'd post my answers here just for posterity. 

1. Please describe how you became a follower of Christ and some of the changes that took place in your life after surrendering your life to Jesus Christ?

I was born and raised in a Christian home, and even from the tenderest first years of my life, I remember making the choice to be His. The changes that He has made in my life since my childhood conversion have never stopped – it has been a constant growth, ever more surrendering, a constant wrestling out my faith with fear and trembling – with very little, “arriving”.

2. Why are you a follower of Christ?

I am a follower of Christ because He is faithful. His worthiness softens my hard heart and His kindness makes me want to be more like Him.

3. What is holiness?

When I think about holiness in a Christian walk – I think about our, “otherness” – how this earth is not our home. When I think about holiness, I’m not thinking about a set of rules and obligations that I need to fulfil in order to somehow magically force myself to be holy, spotless and blameless. I’m thinking about how i have become His – and how as a result, there was a death to the old man (my sinful nature), and now I am new, alive and set apart. God is Holy – and because I am his girl, *I get to be holy too*. This holiness is the evidence I have of my life in Christ! Faithful Father that He is, daily, hourly, in every moment - He strips away the old, the dead, the diseased… and He clothes me in righteousness – inviting me not to strive, but instead to surrender. Holiness happens because *I am His*. 

4. What is the purpose of Church?

That’s a hard question because The Church is the bride of Christ – the body of believers… but when we talk about church, most often we’re talking about the gathering of people at a building to worship together and to grow. I wrote a little blog post about church a couple of years ago – and I think it describes some of the purpose I see in this gathering…

this is the church i go to...

Hey, let me introduce us...

We're the broken - the sick - the lost - the dying...

We've struggled with death and disease, some of us have come here looking for answers, not knowing if we believe in heaven at all... some have become hard and calloused and don't even know why we're here Sunday after Sunday. Still others of us come because we need fellowship with other people who love Jesus...

Some of us are struggling with infertility, some of us have been cheated on, disrespected, abandoned by spouses who should have known better. Some of us have been happily married for decades. Some of us are lonely, guilty, shy, boisterous, bitter or happy. Some of us are reeling from circumstances that have spiraled far beyond our control.

This is the church that i go to...

Some of us mouth the words of the songs because our hearts would break if we *really* sang those words. Some of us are unemployed, former addicts, present day mess-ups, control-freaks or successful businessmen. Some of us are grieving our babies lost to miscarriage - others grieving our children lost to abortion - & still others are gratefully anticipating new life with swelling bellies and tearful gratitude.

This is the church i go to...

Our childhoods are as varied as the rest of our lives... Some were happy.... Some of us were neglected, abused, ignored or abandoned. Some of us were motherless, others fatherless - some of us got good grades & some of us are drop outs. Some of us still feel stuck in those years - the hurts won't heal & we come here looking for answers... looking for Jesus... so we can quit wasting away and start living.

This is the church i go to.

Some of us come straight from work, others from hellish, unimaginable situations, & some straight from a good night's rest... Some of us go home to empty houses, or warm lunches, or out to work again...

But on Sunday morning, we gather as a congregation...

We, who are daily becoming aware of our need...

Jesus.

He is the cup - and we are thirsty - parched, crawling and almost delirious with our need.

Jesus.

He is the bread - our frail bodies are wracked with hunger.

Jesus.

We're clinging to the cross...

This is the church i go to.

I guess, in short , I believe the church is a place to gather to pray, take communion, teach and to worship corporately  with other broken, needy people. 

5.How did you discover God’s will for your life?

I feel much the same about this question as I do about question 1 – in that there has been much growing, learning and changing – with very little arriving at a vocational destination. There have been times though, where I found that I had to do something to be obedient – any other action would have been flagrant disobedience. For instance, when I was 19, through my own disobedience and sin, I found myself pregnant and single. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God’s will for my life was for me to lay down my own dreams, desires and plans – in order to be a good parent to the small child who had come about as a result of my sin. Abortion wasn’t a thought – neither was adoption. She was mine, and I would spend the rest of my life protecting her like I should have by waiting to have sex until I was married and it was a safe place to welcome a child… God’s will is often less confusing when we realize that it’s about laying down our own rights and the things that we feel are owed to us in order to minister to the least of these…

5. Would you describe your experience with spiritual disciplines, in which have you participated?

By spiritual disciplines, are we talking about prayer, devotions, bible reading, weekly church attendance? i’ll share a couple of stories that have shaped me in these. When I was around 27, I found myself hungry for answers. I had a million questions for God – and specifically on one topic that I found baffling in the lack of teaching on it in the church. After asking several pastors, and getting what I felt to be half hearted opinions that felt like a dismissal, I decided to open my bible, and see if I could find any truth there. Over a period of three and a half months, I read my bible cover to cover, highlighting each verse that I felt shed some kind of light on the subject. I found when I reached the end of my bible that I was satisfied with the answers that I had found there – the cultural ambivalence about the subject mattered less to me, now that I had read how my Father felt about it.

The second spiritual discipline that had an enormous impact on my life was my participation in 40 Days for Life – a local prayer vigil outside of our city’s abortion clinic. Never in my life have I had such times of agonized prayer, lonely petition, praise and worship or just companionable silence with God. I learned that praying for an hour, for two hours – was hard. I learned how to pray scripture – how to listen for His voice. I learned to question the value and purpose of prayer – and IN PRAYER, I found the answers to these – and many, many other questions. I fell in love with my community and with the people in it… God changed me, challenged me and grew me when I met diligently with Him in prayer…

6. What does it mean to fear God?

When I talk about “fearing God”- I mean respect and honour. When I got pregnant at 19? I think that I had ceased to fear God. I loved Him, but my sin was precious to me… you know that Thomas Watson quote, “Till sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet. ”?  I guess it’s sort of that – my sin isn’t funny, mild, small, petty… precious. It’s bitter… and fear of the Lord – is the beginning of the wisdom that takes me far from it. 

It's a new season - HOPE

i thank God for fresh new mercies every single morning...
But i do get  special breath of inspiration after the winter break as the new year dawns and i feel more refreshed and bold - full of optimism and confidence as i look ahead. It has become a bit of a habit to choose a word in the new year, but this year instead of choosing a word for the new year, my word chose me...
Hope.
It came to me in verses, instagram posts, conversations. It was pointed out by friends, my kids, in our devotionals... It became almost comical as i laughingly predicted out loud to my kids one mid-December day that the word would be confirmed to me one more time and then texting them the mind boggling confirmation hours later.
i've wrestled with hope over the years. The delicate balance that exists between contentment and desire - between drive and acceptance; this has always been something i carried awkwardly. i could easily jump on to eternal hope - but got bogged down when i tried to carry hope into the here and now of my life. i'd lose hope when things got hard, when things didn't go my way, when i didn't see any possibility of redemption this side of eternity.
But Hope chased me down at Christmas time and i let it catch me. Winter melted into spring and hope was relentless. Summer burned itself out and the blazing glory of fall colours refused to sing an ending song; instead they called me to hope - ever louder, with increasing urgency.
A friend recently encouraged me with an off hand remark that she admired my flexibility with life.
It almost made me cry - this friendly encouragement about something that has been so hard won. i've been wrestling with and praying about this new season that we're heading into, (not having babies and simultaneously my oldest babies stretching out wings and preparing to leave the nest). i think i've felt at times almost like i could lose myself... like so much of my identity rested in child-bearing that i wouldn't know how to navigate the transition. i didn't want to transition. i resisted transition, fought it, cried over it, grieved it... And finally, i buried my face in my Father's chest and poured out my heart... "My hope is gone. The end of this season of life, brings the beginning of the season of death, and i'm not ready... i don't want it."
Gently, tenderly, mercifully... He has been leading me to a deeper understanding of hope. Hope that transcends time - hope that sustains me in the here and now... It has gone hand and hand with surrender, of all things... surrender.
Surrender of beautiful, worthy things is hard. i know it... And it often feels like this surrender is in direct opposition to hope. But when we surrender and our hope becomes not a specific thing or time or person - but instead we begin to hope for what most brings Him glory - it is life giving. When you think you hope for solitude, but God sends noisy, boisterous teenager company... You learn to joyfully hope for those teenagers. When you think you're hoping for your husband to come home, but he's gone and instead you have more time to devote to little boys and stories and all the housekeeping that gets shoved to the side when he's home, you learn to hope to fill your time wisely. When you hope for life to be easy, but instead it's hard, you learn to hope for the fortitude and the character to do hard things.
These lessons didn't happen overnight. The beginning was agonizingly tedious as i'd habitually want to control things that weren't mine to control. i kept track of each set-back... noticing when surrender felt impossible and even wrong... i gave myself a time line - two hundred days of surrender... of hope. Two hundred days where i would be flexible, hope for the good in the change and welcome joyfully all that came to me uninvited. i didn't know what would happen after the two hundred days, but i felt like i could shut my mouth for two hundred days... make notes of my rants, discomfort and failure... and practice a little grace. This summer, i celebrated my two hundredth day and it passed like any other - no fanfare, no burning desire to free myself from the shackles of hope. Maybe it was evidence of my own transformation that i let it pass in anonymity and woke up the next morning ready for more of the same.
i'd like to tell you that everyone around me was amazed by my efforts and by the fruits of obvious change in my life... but i don't know that anyone really noticed... except me. There was the discomfort and pain of surrender, and i knew that part was gonna be hard, but i wasn't prepared for the joy. It snuck up on me the same way the green sneaks up on the grass in spring. Less fierce control - more of the flexibility that my friend assumed was just something that had always been a trademark... There was a fierceness to my newfound joy. My happiness was genuine. i felt good, i felt strong, i felt hope in the here and now, in the daily grind, in the mornings and in the afternoons too. i was transformed by hope.
And i guess part of what i've noticed each year that i learn to recognize my Shepherd's voice is that the things i think i know - are always almost unrecognizably unfamiliar when God teaches them to me. It's so hard to explain a heart change in words - it's so hard to acknowledge His hand when it's internal, eternal, impossible to hold or describe. Surrender, flexibility, humility, joy... hope... words that are familiar and yet now, they're somehow changed; they're strange and new to me... These are the words that He's stirring in my heart in this season, and i'm doing my best to pay attention.