To Be A Fool…

I found this song on Chad’s site. I added the lyrics because I had to read them after listening. The song uses the word whore, so if this is offensive to you, please don’t listen.

Derek Webb (CD Title: She Must & Shall Go Free)

Wedding Dress

Lyrics: If you could love me as a wife
and for my wedding gift, your life
Should that be all I’d ever need
or is there more I’m looking for

and should I read between the lines
and look for blessings in disguise
To make me handsome, rich, and wise
Is that really what you want

I am a whore I do confess
But I put you on just like a wedding dress
and I run down the aisle
and I run down the aisle
I?m a prodigal with no way home
but I put you on just like a ring of gold
and I run down the aisle to you

So could you love this bastard child
Though I don’t trust you to provide
With one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side

I am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers so less wild
That I would take a little cash
Over your very flesh and blood

Because money cannot buy
a husband’s jealous eye
When you have knowingly deceived his wife

You can learn the story behind the song here.
listen to podcast 12.

What is it that you are looking for in life? Significance? Love? Friendship?

I’ve spent much of my life looking for someone to just love and accept me for who I am. But that is all mixed up, because I spent most of those years trying to “be someone else” so that I could be loved and accepted. The supposition was that I had a ‘fundamental flaw.’ Something was so very wrong with me that I didn’t deserve to be loved. I didn’t even deserve to live. My life was an accident that should never have happened.

My self-destructive lifestyle from those years took a big toll on my health, both emotionally and physically.

I’m learning more about God’s love, but there are days where it is just too crazy to believe that I’m loved and accepted and wanted by Him. It seems to have been proven too many times that my original thinking was correct. So it is a process that gets walked out on a daily basis. The process to have those mindsets changed, and truth imparted.

There are so many people walking around wounded. How do we reach out loving hands and hearts and show them Christ?

1 Corinthians 13 (the Message)

The Way of Love

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

When we are broken by someone or something, how does trust come back into play? When we have been abused, how do we become healed and able to move past that and into a new situation without the remnants of the old holding us or determining our reactions?

Like a person who is beaten regularly and then placed in a new home… do we duck when someone reaches out to give us a hug? Or fight back when we feel like someone is showing the traits of the abusive people from the past?

I have seen children who are so sure they will be abused or abandoned again that they push a new family to the breaking point. Or they push because they need proof that they are accepted, so they ‘test’ their new family to see if it is really true that they are loved no matter what. If the new family fails, they become more sure that they are not worthy of love.

I see adults doing the same. I have one dear friend who loves the Lord, but when she is around other Christians she uses foul language. I know why… she believes that they will reject her, so she gives them a way to do it. And the way she chooses, ensures that she will not be rejected because of “who she is” but rather, “how she acts.” And usually it works like a charm. If it doesn’t work, she starts picking apart their theology, or finding other ways to criticize, until people push her away. I happen to know that this lady has come from a terribly abusive childhood. She is broken, and until the Lord heals the broken places in her, she will continue to force her own rejection.

When we are abused by people who claim to be following Jesus, what is our reaction the next time we walk into a church? And then, if we see some of those same behaviors, should we pretend that it is just all ok? And when it is assumed that we will just “fall into place,” how will we react to that? Is it ok to test the ground in a new church to see if it will hold or if it will crumble?

Can you tell my brain is working overtime today???

What do you all think about the use of “titles” in the church? Good? Bad? Indifferent? I have always struggled with the concept of titles, but accepted them because… well… we were supposed to respect our leaders, and submit, right?

I heard a teaching by Graham Cooke a few weeks ago talking about how many “titles” are really ‘job descriptions’ rather than something we should actually call people.

I was reading a post on Battered Sheep about this topic. Go read it for yourself if you’d like, and let me know your thoughts!

Here is just one small quote from the article:

It is important to emphasize that such terms as “elder,” “overseer,” and “pastor” are functional terms, and were never intended to serve as formal titles. In other words, the terminology is descriptive of one’s task; they help to picture a church leader’s function or may even denote one’s spiritual maturity as in the term “elder.” Thus, it is just as foolish and unnecessary to speak of “Pastor Bob” as it is to speak of one who possesses the gift or function of hospitality as “Hospitality Harry”; or one who has the gift of mercy as “Mercy Mary”; or one who has the gift of giving as “Giving George.”

What do you think?

No one enjoys walking people through dark valleys or through painful reactions, but love says, I’ll be there for you. I may not know what to do or what to say. But I just can’t let you go through this alone!

Read the entire article by Wayne Jacobsen here.

This is the huge question in my house.  What about yours?

Stepping out of the comfort zone, and into the vastness of possibilites is rather frightening.  But it sure beats sitting here wondering “what if.”  That is, if I had any idea of where to step.

I just finished reading this book. “SO YOU DON’T WANT TO GO TO CHURCH ANYMORE” by Jake Colsen.

Let me say, wow! This book certainly challenges traditional thinking!

This story is nearly exactly what we went through with the church we left. The timeline is a bit different (and we were in leadership, but not pastors), but it was rather amazing to read OUR story. We are in a small fellowship right now, but with a strong desire to know where Father wants us, and what he wants us doing. This book opened my eyes to some of our continuing struggles to find a “place we fit.”

You can download it and read it from your computer if you’d like to at www.JakeColsen.com

There were actually 2 authors, who combined their names into one for this book.  One of them is Wayne Jacobsen.  If you want to hear an amazing message by him called “Sharing the Father’s Affection” you can watch it here. Or learn more about his ministry at www.lifestream.org The other author is Dave Coleman.

Now THAT was an attention getting title!  :)  I just had to share a cartoon from nakedpastor’s website.  Enjoy!

I’ve been on a lot of sites lately of people who have experienced the worst of church.  The abusive pastors who have controlled them, shamed them, kept them down and under.  The abusive churches where the minor is majored on, and the major is ignored or marked as trivial.

A common thread I’ve seen is that these people are firing God!  Huh?  You know… the God that is the task-master.  The one with the impossible rules.  The one that hides around the corner with a club waiting until you break a rule you didn’t even know about, and then jumps out and hits you… and then insists you remain silent and rigidly perfect.  The one who is stern, distant, and severe.

I must admit… it freaked me out a bit.  But these dear people have a point!  If our version of God is like that listed above, then are we serving the God of the Bible?  If we aren’t… then perhaps it isn’t wrong to fire that god… and embrace the REAL one.  Throw the baby out with the bathwater, and start learning about who God REALLY is.  The true Father!

Let’s hear it.  Tell me…. please.  How does this work?

What exactly conspires to make us unteachable? What happens that creates the sense of security that we know it all, and there is no more knowledge to be gained? If you have insight, please comment, because I’m so struggling to understand this complete lock-down against any possibility of something new to be learned.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about anything weird, or heritical. I’m not saying to ‘open your mind’ to things that aren’t scripture. I’m talking about scripture. Do we read the Bible once and that is all we need to do? Do we ever stop learning about God? Do we ever know all that there is to know? Is God finite after all?

I know the answer is no. We never have learned it all. But then where does the attitude come from that “you have nothing to teach me.” or “I know the Word, and whatever you have to say is something I already know.”

I’m sure you’ve already guessed that I’ve experienced this. Haven’t we all? Perhaps not always in regards to scripture, but human nature seems to lend itself well to pride. My children are often heard telling one another that “I already know that.” It is quite humorous at times, when I absolutely know that they don’t already know it. But it isn’t really funny after all…. particularly when it comes from an adult that really should not feel the need to make themselves more righteous-sounding than anyone else. I’m guessing it is arrogance rooted in either pride… or in fear. Fear of somehow looking like less?

I may sound angry… but I’m really very saddened by this. Incredulous. Amazed. And it really makes relationships quite difficult, because there can be no conversation. And the hardest thing is to watch the person caught in this attitude lose out on wonderful relationship with Christian brothers and sisters, because no one can stand to be around them for more than a few minutes at a time! I’m sure that isn’t right either… so what do you do? Seriously… what do you do?

Just my rant for the week. Please let me know if you have insight into this. It is so much easier to have compassion for the people who feel ‘less than’ rather than the ones who feel ’so much more than.’

Blessings,

Heidi