It's time to tell our story.

This is a post that has been rumbling in my heart for weeks and ages but it's never felt like the right time. Or really, I've just been scared. But after reading words by a friend today, I knew it was time. 

I wrote the following words, just the italized ones, to that friend in an email just now, and then I came here and wrote the rest. It's loosely edited and all my heart.

I'm excited to hear the parts of your story that you share. I too have felt this similar rumble in my heart, one that's making my knees tremble with fear because it's terrifying to say yes to the story God puts us in. There is so much of my life I like sharing, and that's easy, but I feel this tension to start sharing the parts that don't shine quite so pretty, but that just absolutely wreak of the Gospel. 

I feel this tension right now. So strongly. To tell the stories of what is actually happening. I’ve never lied here, and I’ve never painted a perfect life, but I’ve also written little about some of the biggest things going on in my life.

I want to write more about being a worship leader. How I prepare and how I love it. How it’s hard and beautiful and how it’s changed so very much over the past year or so. How my prep is some of the most important work I do for my church.

I want to write more about being a community group leader at my church. It’s one of the sweetest challenges in my life right now. I told some friends recently that during group I usually have the tensest stomach because I feel such a need to make sure the Gospel is spoken, and how it’s also one of my biggest joys. I’m more aware of my failures than my successes as a leader, and I want to write about those things too. I want to share the ways I’ve really failed, the spiritual battle that shows up every single time I prepare for group, the words that the Lord has given me in the midst of it all.

And then there’s the things I don’t want to write about. But that I have to.

I don’t want to but need to and will be writing about being single. The past few weeks have held some of the clearest words from God I have ever heard. And it’s been terrifying. I’m always good at the beginning of things and terrible with the follow-through so I’m trying to listen to Him with such a heart of obedience. Because I’d like to follow through with the call I’m hearing Him tell me, even if it utterly terrifies me.

In the talks of singleness, I’ve got a whole bunch of subjects I’ve been writing on, and trying to study up on. I think there are a whole lot of lies that we’ve been told as singles, and as marrieds, and as everybody in the church. I don’t think anybody set out to lie deliberately  but I think Satan set out to just put confusion on top of singleness and I really believe that he has been succeeding. I want to write about the lies I’m hearing and I want to more so write out the truth that the Gospel shares.

In the talks of singleness, I want to talk about what it looks like to trust God fully with your life and also be so very lonely. Not incomplete, because Jesus completes, but definitely lonely. And how that’s not sinful. Oh friends, lonely is not a sin. What we do with our lonely can be (and often is) sinful, but the feeling of being lonely really isn’t sinful.

I want to talk about how Jesus has shifted my heart over the past few months. I want to talk about how Jesus has changed my life. I want to talk about the Gospel and how I was dead and now I am alive!

Yesterday the pastor said: God is not a god who makes bad people good. He makes dead people alive.

That’s what I want to share. I want to share what it means to be alive in Christ.

So I am going to!

Will you join me? Will you start writing the words that are scary to pen but necessary to hear? Your heart needs to be willing to write them, but even if you’re not willing to share them yet, will you write them?

Will you grab a new journal and a pen, or use your typing fingers, and will you start writing?

Because I need your story. I need it so desperately. I need to know I’m not the only one living in the tensions of this life.

Will you join me?

Because it's time we all tell our story.

tell your story

Early evening yesterday, my friend Stef came over. I already had the front door open and was enjoying the surprisingly spring-like weather. She walked in and I suggested a walk. My roommate Alex joined us and we set off. We talked about our hearts and the things going on, and it was lovely.

We got home and enjoyed dinner and more conversation. 

At one point, Stef asked me what my story was.

For the next, probably thirty minutes of longer, I shared my testimony. 

It’s easy now, four years into a solid relationship with Christ to forget the nearly two years I spent not living for Him It’s easy to forget how very enticed I became with sin, how I served myself, and how He kept protecting me.

I often tell people of how, during my time away from Christ, I made decisions that should have had very distinct and serious repercussions. And God, in His sovereign grace, protected me. He didn’t let things happen that should have, and part of the reason I came back to Him and started to believe the Gospel was because I was so annoyed by His protection.

I’m praying for a heart that better remembers that time, that has better compassion on those who don’t yet believe (or even won’t ever) in the Gospel.

I’m remembering that grace is so good, even better the more I know it.

Jesus saves. He saved me and I really believe that He will save more.

Tell your story. Remind yourself that once you were blind and now you see. Remind yourself that at one time you were dead in your sin, but now you are alive in Christ.

Remind yourself that Jesus saved you from the darkest and worst thing possible, which is eternity away from Him. He gave you Himself, and that is truly the best.

 

{a walk through} psalm 73

As I started looking at this Psalm a while ago (I tend to be about ten Psalms in advance, not necessarily with my posts written, but with the verses and graphics made), I couldn't help but find myself in verse 3.

For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

I've shared this story in small portions enough that I don't feel a need to drudge it out again, but, a few years back, I walked away from the Lord. Not because I did not believe in Him but because I wanted to serve myself.

I spent somewhere between a year and two years juggling selfishness and Christianity. And it's all because I was envious of those I saw around me.

So this verse, it's all too familiar for me.

Eventually, Jesus broke me to a place where I decided that I had to choose one or the other. I could no longer do the balancing act of a good Christian when I was at church and a girl who had no desire to live for God every other moment.

I moved cities and let Jesus welcome me back.

The end of this Psalm is sweet to me.

Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
        you hold my right hand.
    You guide me with your counsel,
        and afterward you will receive me to glory.
    Whom have I in heaven but you?
        And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
    My flesh and my heart may fail,
        but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:23-26

Because of the goodness of the Lord, He is the strength of my heart, and He is my portion forever.

What's your story? What did Jesus save you from?

relentless love

As someone who was raised in a Christian home, stopped believing, and was ultimately saved by Jesus a few years ago, this post is one of the most relevant and accurate articles I have read.

If you love Jesus and happen to love anybody who doesn't love Jesus, this is a great piece.

Here's a snippet which actually quite describes the reason I walked away from Jesus:

"At first I pretended that my reasoning was high-minded and philosophical. But really I just wanted to drink gallons of cheap sangria and sleep around. Four years of this and I was strung out, stupefied and generally pretty low. Especially when I was sober or alone."

Those words resonate with me. The reason I walked away from God had NOTHING to do with belief. It had to do with what I wanted. I wanted to serve myself.

So I did.

And God was relentless.
Absolutely relentless.

Picture me, about four years ago today, drunk as a skunk (whatever that means), sitting at a bus stop with a boy I'd met in a club telling him that we couldn't have sex because I was a Christian. And him honouring that.

That was the relentless love of Jesus in my life.
Saving me from my own stupid sin.
Protecting me from my selfish ambitions.

And there were consequences and hurts, pains that required a lot of grace to heal.

But that grace also came.
Of course that grace came.

And there were key people in that season of my life that both made it better (aka pointed me to Jesus) and who made it worse (aka didn't point me to Christ).

My parents were the very best. They didn't hide the fact that they did not agree with me, but they also were kind and gracious. They never stopped loving me, and they were always ready for me to start living for Jesus again. I know that they prayed for me.

I had friends who stopped talking to me because I wasn't living for God anymore. That didn't point me to Christ. That pointed me to the friends who would accept me as I was - namely the friends who didn't love Jesus.

I had one friend, who though she didn't hang out with me as much, told me that she prayed for me everyday. I knew that she was my friend through each moment, and that really impacted me.

I remember being angry at God.
Because He kept protecting me.

I was still going to church sometimes, typically hungover from the night before. I'd quit my youth leader position because it was too hypocritical, and I'd figured out ways to hide how much alcohol I was consuming from my parents - namely I just wouldn't go home at night.

So eventually I just got to a point of being frustrated.
I decided that I would move wherever God put me and I would start living for Him again.
Because I was tired of feeling pulled between the two.
I knew I had to make a choice.

I chose grace.

It took me a while to start living for God again.

I moved cities, found the church I'm at now, and tried to get my stuff together.

It was just a typical Sunday at Westside Church, my current church, when I heard the Gospel for the first time.

The pastor talked about how there was no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, and I went up and asked him about that.

It was that truth that saved me.

The truth that God loved me and accepted me led me to love and accept Him.

It took a long time for my heart to grasp it.
To believe that there really was no condemnation.

But eventually, really slowly, I realized that Jesus loved me right that very minute.
And the next minute.
And even ten minutes before.

The love of Jesus wasn't leaving me.
And it hasn't left me.




What's your story? I'd love to hear it.

I want my words to tell a story.

A story untold will never impact a heart.

That makes sense right?

When I take the time to open my heart to somebody, or to the internet, I have the opportunity to impact them.

I pray that my words are impactful, that they point people to the God who created everything, to the Jesus who redeems, to the Holy Spirit that aides.

I've been working for months on my testimony. well I was working on it. I started writing it months and months ago, but I got overwhelmed when it came to the part of me walking away from Jesus, so I put it away.

Last week I opened a new document and started writing just a snippet of my story. I'm still working on the piece, and I'm not quite sure if it'll end up here or as a guest post for a friend, but regardless, it needs to be shared.

I tend to look down on pastors who speak with a lot of stories, which is pretty dumb of me, since Jesus spoke in stories. He knew that stories would draw people in and would remain in their memory, thus changing their life and heart.

So since I've had this gentle conviction to stop looking down on others who use share stories as illustrations, I've realized I want to tell more stories.

A true story of redemption, which is my own story, and which is the story of anybody who has given their life to God.

I want to tell stories of what I learn.

I want to push myself to share stories of things that haven't happened, because there is something kind of magical in a made-up story, especially one that still teaches something beautifully.

It's like when kids watch shows on tv. Most of those shows are trying to teach the kid something, like to share. I guess I want my blog to do that, to teach people, sometimes in such a way that they don't even know they're being taught.

I want my words to tell a story.
And I'm excited to share more of mine.

What's your story? Have you shared it online? What makes you share it or not share it?