Part Two: True. Tearless. Testimony.

Last week, I posted the beginning of my testimony about how God changed my life last summer. I promised to continue my story this week and I will, but the little Beast returned last night from his first ever weekend away from home, so we're spending every waking minute catching up on our cuddles and quality time. We really missed one another. Anyway, here is a somewhat condensed version of the "conclusion" to the life-changing evidence of God's presence in my life.

On my way out of church after that powerful moment of prayer with the missionary preacher, a greeter at the door handed me a flier. It was an an advertisement for an upcoming event at the church. Their very first women’s seminar. Now you may remember from my previous post that I had been frantically searching for a women’s retreat online for weeks. All of the seminars and retreats I’d found were expensive and out-of-town, impossible for me to get to in the final stages of my pregnancy or first days with a newborn baby. Yet, suddenly, a women’s seminar was coming to my own town? At the very church I’d only just started to attend that day? And better yet, it was free? Do you have any doubt that this was God once again shouting at me that He was there, listening and answering my cries for help?!

The seminar took place just one month after little Beauty was born. I was hesitant to leave her for the day when she was so new, but I knew that God wanted me to be at that seminar. It was titled "Come Away My Beloved" after the title of a classic devotional text by Francis J. Roberts. It was billed as "A Time of Respite, Worship, Prayer and Fellowship," featuring beautiful worship music, Scripture, Excerpts from Roberts' text, prayer and devotional activities. It was a profound experience, and I grew exponentially in my relationship with God that day.

I want to tell you about the single most powerful moment of the day, a culmination of all the times that summer when God's hand was blatantly visible in my life. The seminar focused on learning to connect with God by paying attention for his cues, and listening to his voice. During the first break for private prayer and journaling, I wrote these exact words:

I want to listen to your voice but how do I know when I'm hearing it? I feel you working in my life and on my heart. I know you are answering my prayers and I am AMAZED at your power and your loving kindness. But I'm not always sure when it's YOU speaking to me. Is your voice my inner voice? Is that the Holy Spirit or my own conscience? Or does your voice come from outside? Do you speak to me through music, other people, sermons? I know you obviously speak to me through Your Word. But is your voice ever something I hear inside myself? Or is that "leaning on my own understanding"? Help me to recognize your voice God.

When we reconvened moments later, the seminar leader opened with the following passage from Come Away My Beloved by Frances J. Roberts (pg. 176):

"...when I come to you, I come via the very citadel of your soul - not as an intruder from the outside. It is as though a guest came to a home and entered the inner sanctum, rather than coming by way of the outer gate... I come to you via my Holy Spirit from the depths of your being that you have never plumbed, from chambers within your soul your eyes have never seen."

As she was reading, my body went hot all over. I was short of breath and overcome with tears. I should not have been surprised because God had been visibly working in my life for weeks, but this was an undeniable, direct, ANSWER to questions I had written down JUST MOMENTS BEFORE!!! I could not believe it.

Since that day, I have been a different person. The depression, anxiety, restlessness and fear are gone, replaced with serenity, contentment, trust and joy. I am still a work in progress, and I fail God more often than I please Him, I know. I lose patience daily with my husband and children. I curse other drivers on the road. Some Sundays, I choose to clean house instead of attend church. But I have a purpose, and that is to do God’s will on this Earth, and to be a reflection of His love to my fellow man. I am no longer stumbling blindly through my days, or living life accidentally and reactively. I have a plan, and that fills me with immeasurable, unshakable peace.

For those of you seeking peace, let me recap for you how I found it, though I am sure the path to contentment in Christ is different for each of us. Here are the steps that were necessary for my personal experience though.

1. Pray, and mean it. Pray desperately, fervently, pleadingly, honestly and not out of habit or rote.
2. Read the Scriptures. Everyday. With focus and critical thought, not just absently or shallowly.
3. Worship. Attend church, sing along to worship music, listen attentively to sermons.
4. Connect with others who share your attitude of improvement for support and encouragement. Share your story with others, it will help remind you of the power of the experience.

Thank you for taking the time to read my lengthy and serious post. I hope that you can take something from it that helps you in your relationship with Jesus Christ.

Oh, and while you're here, be sure to enter my current Play that Funky Music Giveaway!



A Jay and Deb Production.

Testimony: True. Tearless. Tribute.

I usually try to keep my blog posts fun, humorous and short, so if that’s what you came anticipating today, I apologize for throwing you a curve ball, but I think if you stick around you will get more than you were expecting from me.

In recent weeks I have had guilt on my heart for allowing my blog to distract me from more important life tasks, so I have been praying that blogging would become an edifying experience for me, and that God might use my blog in an authentic and natural way to bring glory to Himself. Several things have happened in past days that lead me to believe now is the right time for a serious attempt to do so.

Yesterday, I read an amazing post by Angie over at Bring the Rain about how her current intimate relationship with God was formed. You should all take a moment to read it, as it is one of the most beautifully written pieces I've ever read, and I was an English major and English teacher once upon a time so I've read a lot. Angie's post spoke so loudly and directly to my heart that I have been inspired to share my own testimony about how God recently changed my heart and my life forever.

Last summer, I went through what I call a Spiritual Crisis. It was a depression actually. I was expecting a second baby and was terrified about how I’d manage to be a successful mother to two kids under two. I felt like my life was without purpose or direction; that I was stumbling through it accidentally when what I really wanted was to live - and parent - with intention. I needed a stronger relationship with my God. I did not want to be lukewarm, or distracted, or worldly. I wanted my love for Christ and commitment to his commandments to be like a fire within me, overpowering my sin nature and the temptations of this world with its intensity. I wanted my every action to be motivated by love for Christ, and I wanted to be an example of Christ-centeredness for my children.

I began desperately and frantically searching for the right book that would tell me how to achieve this, or for a Christian women’s seminar that would light this fire in me, teach me how to be a woman of Christ. I cried, and prayed, and Googled until all hours of the night for days on end. And then an epiphany dawned, not suddenly like the proverbial light bulb going on, but slowly, layer by sweet layer, God’s truth unfolded itself for me. I was making this so much harder than it was. I did not need a book, or seminar, or song, or person to teach me how to follow Christ. All I needed was prayer and God’s written word. How simple! In Angie's words, what I needed to do was "Disregard the manuals and pick up the brush."


So I began to pray and read the Bible regularly. I set aside time every morning and evening for devotionals. I would bring my failures and fears and weaknesses and wants to God, and I would beg for him to fix me. I would plead with him to show me what to do. And the most amazing thing happened. Everytime I finished praying, then opened the Bible to a random place, the Scripture that was before me was a direct answer to a question or worry weighing on my heart! And those answers began to change me, though I was still struggling with how to become the person I wanted to be. Part of me was still looking for that one perfect book, or person, or seminar that would do the work for me.

At this time, I was also feeling a burning need to go back to church (we had let sleeping in, running errands, home improvements keep us from church for months). For several weeks worth of Sundays, I ignored the need for a morning of worship in favor of doing other less important things. But one Sunday, I could not quiet the desire, so ended up at church in spite of the million other things we had planned for ourselves that day. That particular Sunday, there was a guest speaker, a missionary from Africa coming home to report on his experiences in Senegal. His sermon was titled, “Finding Your Way Through the Fog,” and started with this verse:

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5

And there it was again. So simple. The direct answer to my most fervent prayer. How?

Trust the Lord
Lean not on your own understanding
Acknowledge him in all your ways

I connected to that sermon more powerfully and intensely than I had to anything I’d ever heard in my life before. I was beyond moved; lifted up. It was as though that man was speaking directly to me. And I thought to myself, “Maybe he is.” In fact, maybe God was speaking to me through this man. This was a shocking idea to me. Though I’d casually believed in Christ as the Lord all my life, I didn’t believe that God still spoke to people, or performed miracles, or really showed himself present in the lives of us mortals at all. But every time I prayed for direction through the Scripture, a perfect set of verses presented itself when I opened my Bible. And when I didn’t want to go to church, an irresistible need to go drove me there. On the exact day that a man preached about how to find my way out of the fog of depression and inertia I’d been lost in.

And that’s not all. After the sermon, the missionary said, “If you are feeling lost in the fog, please do not leave here today without coming forward to speak to me, and letting me pray with you.”

I started to leave, then stopped mid-step and considered turning back and going to him. I had never, ever gone to the front of church to speak to the preacher in my entire life. I liked being anonymous, filing out and disappearing among the crowd without anyone even knowing I had been there. I was certainly not going up there today, when I didn’t even know what I’d say to the man, who was a perfect stranger, for crying out loud. I started to leave again, then stopped. I was in the midst of internal struggle. I kept hearing his words again in my head, “do not leave without speaking to me”. But I was so embarrassed. I didn’t want other people to see me going up there. And I didn’t know what to say once I was before this obvious Saint of a believer. In the end, my feet carried me to the front of the church against my head’s wishes.

When I got there, to my complete and utter humiliation, I burst into tears. I was crying so hard I could not even tell the man why I was standing there. I could only choke out an embarrassed apology. Try as hard as I might, I could not curb the tears, and could not find my voice. He said to me, “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything, but would you allow me to pray for you?” No one had ever prayed for me before as far as I knew. I nodded my head yes, and he put his hands on my shoulders, then bowed his head. I bowed mine too, my shoulders still shaking with sobs. And when he began to pray, I was washed with amazement because his prayer was exactly what my heart would’ve prayed had it been able to speak directly to God without my clumsy words and thoughts getting in the way. I had not said anything to this stranger, but somehow he knew exactly what to ask God on my behalf. Again, I was struck by the thought that God must be at work here, helping small, broken, unworthy, little me.

I left feeling hollowed out, in a good way. Emptied of all the weights I had been carrying in the pit of my stomach. God had washed me clean somehow that day, and left a blank canvas that He could paint His will on.

For weeks after that day, God continued to work visible miracles in my life, even more astonishing than anything I've shared in this post. I want to tell you about those, too, but this post has gotten so long, and it matters deeply to me that you witness all the evidence of God's grace, power and mercy that I can present. So I will finish my testimony next Tuesday, if you all would be kind enough to join me again then. Thank you.

To Be Continued...


A Jay and Deb Production.