Month: July 2021

Great Faith

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REVISITING OUR BELIEFS ABOUT FEAR AND ANXIETY.

I have struggled with anxiety most of my adult life.  It didn’t start until my first child was born, but in those early years it was the constant voice in my head.  The what-ifs were loud and unrelenting, leading to lack of sleep, constant worry, and a diagnosed stress ulcer at the age of 24.

When I first began mentioning my anxiety to a group of women I was in a study with, they initially assured me that this was a normal “new mom” experience, but as the weeks passed and our relationship grew, I began to unpack more of what this looked like in my world.  It quickly became evident that the length and depth of my  fear and anxiety episodes (can they really be called episodes when they happen all day every day) were significantly more that the other “new mom anxiety” experiences of my group and we prayed together for wisdom, healing and faith.

We moved shortly afterwards, and on my own in a new city/state, I had to walk the path of trusting God with things I couldn’t control.  Turning all the unknowns and the fears over to Him, praying to quiet my fears, asking Jesus to heal my heart.  It was a regular exercise and healing did come!

As the years passed, my moments of extreme anxiety grew further and further apart, and my assessment would have been that I replaced fear with faith.

So I spent years telling myself that when anxiety surfaced I was lacking faith.  But as I grew and matured in my walk with Jesus it wasn’t always that simple. 

Despite the years of steadily growing faith, the kind of faith that is formed in seeing God show up over and over again, the kind of faith that is forged in the fire, when God steps in and walks through it with us instead of just removing it, seasons of significant change and unknowns still cause my anxiety to surface.  I then I recently heard this…

“If you struggle with anxiety, you actually have capacity for deep faith – it’s just pointed in the wrong direction.”

Read that again. 

You see, faith is believing the unseen.  Fear and anxiety are also caused by believing the unseen.  The difference is which kingdom we are focused on. My prayer and surrender to God in my anxiety aren’t about growing my faith, they are about refocusing my attention.  I didn’t lose faith, I lost focus.

Friends, if you struggle with fear and anxiety and somewhere along the way you have either decided yourself or have been told that you lack faith, can I offer some truth?  You have capacity for great faith, you are not lacking in ability or belief.  Spend some time with Jesus, offer Him the things you are clinging to.  Can you see the kingdom of God in your circumstances? Ask Him to help you refocus.    

You are a Woman of Great Faith.

Refining

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Refining

Change can be exciting, it can be challenging, and sometimes it just hurts.  Too many times in ministry, the hurt from change is pushed down or hidden as it feels like a shameful reaction.  We assume that we are just reluctant to change and stuck in our ways, or that we lack faith, or that we aren’t on board.  Sometimes that is true, sometimes it is not.

Regardless of where the hurt comes from, it still deserves to be acknowledged and honored.  If, in a season of change, you experience loss, it is possible to be on board with change but still grieve the loss.  Grief is not selfish or bad, what we do with it is a different story.

Several years ago, God began to take me down a path of significant change.  I didn’t know it yet, but He was leading me away from a ministry and a position that I loved to a new opportunity.  I wasn’t looking for a new opportunity, and so many things began to change and shift in my current situation that I felt incredible loss and grief.  Even when it became clear that God was opening a new door, I resisted and tried to get on board with all the changes around me.  I started wondering if I was really just stuck in my ways, or if I had done something wrong to cause this constant feeling of loss.  When I finally chose to walk through the door God offered, I admit, I was excited for what could be, but was still very much grieving what I was walking away from. 

I wish I had honored that feeling more.  Instead it felt like a lack of faith in His new promises to talk about the loss.  It felt disloyal and “not on mission” with my new ministry to feel sad about leaving the old.  As I silenced the grief of the loss, I began to replace it with reasons and justification, and before I even knew what was happening, anger and resentment for the changes that led to my leaving had taken the place of grief.  I felt torn, I was excited about the new opportunity and ministry I had been given but I was also angry and hurt by the loss of the old.  And then I heard this….

The last thing to burn out of Gold in the refining process is silver.  God is burning out the good to get to the great.

Let that sink in.

When gold is refined in fire all the impurities are burned up.  The dirt and rocks and stone are fairly easy to remove.  Later the other minerals and metals are burned up.  But the hardest, hottest part of the refining process is the removal of silver.  And silver is beautiful.  It is also precious.  On its own it has its own worth and value.  There is a time a place for silver.  But God is always changing us, always refining us. 

It turns out I was in the refiner’s fire, and it was hot and it hurt and I was clinging on to precious silver, and it was time to let go.  I wish I had done it a little more gracefully.  It took a while, and I probably forced the fire to burn hotter than it needed to (and suffered a few extra burns along the way) but I finally realized the truth.  God had traded me gold for silver.  The silver is still beautiful, it has purpose, it has worth. I can look back and appreciate it, but gold it what He calls us to.

If you find yourself in the the midst of painful changes, I pray you stop and look closer.  If you are experiencing loss, I pray you honor it and grieve it well.  And in the midst of the fire, the heat and yes, the pain, I pray you see the gold that God is offering you in exchange.

 

rewriting

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editing

 

the author

God has already defined us.  He has already called us beautiful, chosen, treasured, crowned, adopted, redeemed, fearless, wanted, desired, unique, delighted in, seen, gifted, needed, courageous and so much more.  And yet life has happened.  And the voice of the enemy, through the voices of others, through our own narrative, through the events of our lives have crowded out those truths.  Today, we embark on the mission to reclaim our crown and all its glory.  To pick up the pieces that have been stolen from us, that have been tarnished and marred, that we have discarded through our own actions.  We have experienced our world, our truths, ourselves thru our eyes, and our eyes have often deceived us.

In the world of Psychology there are a million resources to help you re-write your story.  To guide you on a path of happiness, to help you see that you have the power to change your next chapter.  Those are good and valuable and I highly recommend them.  But if we stop there, if we focus only on what we want to be true of our lives, then we miss God.  God wants a hand in rewriting our story, in fact, He is the  author of our story, and he’d like us to stop reading between the lines, adding our own broken narrative and return to the source.

Would you like to go on a journey of rewriting your story with us?.

A Journey of Truth

The Crowned Box, the first in our series, will walk you through a deep look at what God thinks, feels, and says about you.  We will take a hard look at all the things in our lives that we allow to define us and distract us from that truth.  Put together by a  team of women who have served in all areas of ministry, this is the box we all wish we had had. 

The box will take you on an exciting journey, through the joy of God’s promises, the hard work of reclaiming that which was lost, and moving forward.  

find out more