Category Archives: ministry

Freedom Friday: The Power of Service

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My 4 year-old came to me recently and excitedly shared about his prayer life.

He said, “Mommy, when I wake up in the morning, I pray to God that……”

OK. I’m pausing in the story to say I was sure he was going to share he had been praying for a loved one’s health, or the end to world hunger. Actually, no, I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to say any of those things. Let’s get back to the story.

“Mommy, when I wake up in the morning, I pray to God that I would see a ghost!”

After a discussion where he reassured me he knew ghosts aren’t real, I asked if he was praying about anything else.

“That I’d have lots and lots of video games.”

Well. There you have it.

I of course posted on Facebook to ask how to teach gratitude, compassion and social awareness to small kids. I got a lot of reassurances that his behavior is age-appropriate, we’re already doing some good things, and also some concrete suggestions. It brought to mind some of the ways we served when I was a child, the most memorable being at the soup kitchen.

You may be asking, what does this have to do with freedom?

We know that Jesus came to serve. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Mark 10:45 (NLT)

Jesus served by laying down His whole self, both in life and death. How does following His example help us learn to walk in freedom?

1. Service helps us to love.
If you are still deep in the thick of your battle with life-controlling issues, you may think it silly or even inappropriate for you to consider working in service, especially to the church. There are many possibilities and places you could serve, however. Does your church provide coffee and snacks after service? Offer to bake or help with clean-up. What sort of outreaches are happening in your community? Assist at a food pantry.

“For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” Galatians 5:13-14

In a mystery we can’t fully understand, when we serve others we are serving Jesus Himself.

“Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’” Matthew 25:37-40

Service helps us to love. It helps us to love ourselves, to love God and to love others.

2. Service helps us recognize our gifts.
” God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.” 1 Peter 4:10 (NLT)

I heard a speaker once say that if you don’t know how God is gifted you, or where He’s calling you to serve, just try something. Ask the person in charge of greeting newcomers if you can try it one Sunday. Offer to sit in on a kid’s Sunday school class. Fold bulletins. Find something that seems interesting to you, or where there is a need, and commit to serving there for a period of time. If it’s not a good fit, ask the leadership of that ministry where you have strengths and where else you might consider serving.

3. Service requires God’s strength.
The verse from 1 Peter 4 quoted above continues, “If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God. If anyone serves, he should do it with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ.” (NIV1984)

Serving requires God’s strength. You won’t always feel like getting out of bed early on a Sunday to set up chairs. Ask God to help you. Service is another way to grow in intimacy with God, as you ask Him not only for His strength, but His grace in empowering you to be a blessing to others.

4. Service gives us perspective.
My favorite answer to my Facebook question was from my friend who lives with her family in Guatemala. How do you teach children empathy and social awareness? She simply wrote, “Move here.”

Service helps us to get our eyes off our own struggles for a moment. It reminds us that the whole world is struggling and suffering in some way. On the other hand, do not fall into the trap of shaming yourself about the time and money you have spent on your recovery. There is a time and a place for that as well. But those problem that seem so big and overwhelming can be put into perspective when we come face to face with the suffering of others.

This past week on Mother’s Day, one of the pastors at church shared about his mother not eating for days to ensure she had enough food to feed her children. Still, the kids often ate once a day. Even in the most trying times, I could likely feed my children for a month with what I have on hand. Imagining opening the cabinets to find nothing for my kids is one of the most heartbreaking things I could imagine.

You might also consider going on a humanitarian missions trip with your church or other outreach, as my friend suggested in her “Move here” comment. Others agreed that nothing gives you perspective like seeing how the truly poor live, or walking through the devastation caused by a natural disaster.

In what way could be serve someone today?

Freedom Friday: Tools for the Journey, God’s Word

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I talk about trusting God a lot.

I mean a lot a lot 🙂

I was talking to a friend last week about something and, of course, I was sharing about choosing to trust God. “Just like you say in your blog,” was the response I received.

Yep 🙂

As I’ve shared before, I write what I know. I write what I’ve lived. I write what I’ve experienced, what God has shown me, or is showing me.

I don’t write about it if it hasn’t already begun to pulsate in my blood.

I write about this because I hear from people, at least on a weekly basis, that they don’t know how to trust God. I hear from people who have been Christians for decades that God is confronting them on the fact that they don’t really trust Him.

They may trust Him for salvation – but they do not trust Him with their daily lives. They don’t really trust Him for provision or healing or freedom or any of the other things they desire or need.

Why don’t we trust God?

There could be a million reasons. There may have been a time He didn’t come through. He didn’t heal a loved one. He didn’t give us that job we really wanted. He didn’t come through with that miracle.

He didn’t provide – or at least not in the way we wanted Him to.

Trusting in God isn’t just about trusting that He is going to do certain things for us as His adopted children, or that He will give us certain things because He loves us.

It’s about trusting in His character, that He is who He says He is and He will do what He has said He will do.

Ultimately, I think one of the main reasons we don’t trust God is because we don’t know Him. Yes, we have been adopted as His children through Jesus’ gift of salvation, but we don’t really know Him. We have unrealistic expectations of Him. Yes, God can do anything, even the impossible – according to His perfect will. Yet our method is to come up with a plan, and expect Him to bless it and carry it out in our timing.

“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21

We need to grow to know His character, His attributes. We need to know His heart.

We cannot surrender our struggles to and grow to trust someone we don’t know. The primary ways we get to know God are through spending time in His Word and in prayer.

Let me pause and clarify. Lots of people (and I do mean lots) who have life-controlling issues (and especially relational brokenness issues) have been told that if they read the Bible and prayed more, their problems would go away. I’m not saying that at all. There is a reason that “Spending Time with the Freedom Giver” is only 1 of the Freedom Steps in my “Learning to Walk in Freedom” series. It’s only 1 step in the process, but it’s an important step.

BUT I think those of us who have been indoctrinated with this “try harder, do more” mentality of “read the bible and pray more” sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water, as the saying goes (um, and being a parent, what a strange saying!).

Since we’ve already “tried harder” and it didn’t “work”, we don’t invest the time & energy needed into having a regular, set aside time with God and His Word. I fell into this trap for a while. I continued to read some Christian literature, sometimes a devotional book, but I did not spend much time studying the Bible unless I was preparing to speak (kind of embarrassing to admit that!).

There was just so much baggage attached to the Bible for me. I had to get over that. I had to release that baggage and those misconceptions to God and recognize what I’d already experienced the truth of: when I read His Word consistently, I walk away changed.

Now I can’t live without the Word of God in my life.

If you feel lost in how to begin studying the Word of God, here are a few ways you could start digging in.

1. Start with a gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke & John are the 4 gospels in the New Testament, 4 accounts of Jesus’ time on earth. They are all very different. Mark is a shorter book with rapid-fire description of what Jesus did here on earth. John is slightly longer, but it provides a fuller picture of the person of Jesus, with quite a few of His longer teachings and speeches, as well as an intimate look into His time with the disciples.

2. Get a study Bible. Ask a friend (or friends) what study Bible they use. Go to a book store and check a few out. Currently, I’m reading the “Life Recovery Bible” which is the New Living Translation and includes thoughts about recovery and the 12 steps. I generally read the NIV (I have a Serendipity Bible from my campus ministry days that has thought-provoking, and sometimes silly, questions to ponder) or the NASB, so I wanted to read something a little different.

One word of caution: even if you are using a study Bible, you don’t need to always be reading the little boxes and interpretations of the passage. You can simply read the Scriptures and work through them yourself (see #3 for some suggestions). If you tend to rely too heavily on other’s thoughts about the Bible or trust too much in others to interpret Scripture for you, you’re likely better off with an old-fashioned “pew Bible“.

3. Use a study method. When I was a student, I used the PROAPT method.
Pray: Begin your time of study by praying for God to open your eyes and your heart to what the passage might be speaking to you today.
Read: Read the passage you’ve chosen for the day.
Observe: Simply observe, by asking the questions how, who, why, where, what & when, what is going on in the passage. Who are the characters? What are they doing? Where are they? When is this happening? What are they feeling and experiencing?
Apply: Apply the passage to your life. What might this passage have to teach me today?
Pray: Pray again that God would make what you have read have His life breathed into it.
Tell: Tell someone about what you have learned in your Bible reading today.

Another similar resource is often referred to as “the Navigators Word Hand“. The “Word Hand” shows five methods of learning from the Bible: Hear, Read, Study, Memorize, Meditate.

A friend of mine likes to take Scripture and put it in his own words by writing his thoughts out in his journal.

4. Think outside the box. Your “quiet time”, as it’s often called, does not need to look the same every day. Mine doesn’t. Ask God to help you figure out what works best for you. Be creative. Gary Thomas’ book, Sacred Pathways, has some great suggestions.

There are lots of options.

Next week, I will share more on this topic 🙂 See you then!

Freedom Friday: The God Who Sustains

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We are back from the conference! It was an amazing time, refreshing and yet tiring (I’m sure being in the car 24 hours over the course of 3 days added to that!). There is a lot to think about & reflect on. In addition to that, there are several situations within my circles of family & friends that require lots of prayer & attention.

Yesterday, as I leaned against our chest freezer, wondering what to make for dinner, I became keenly aware that God alone is my Sustainer. I went to a Bible search tool to remind myself of Scriptures that speak to this.

I came across a gem:

“You give me your shield of victory, and your right hand sustains me; you stoop down to make me great.” Psalm 18:35

Since returning home, Holland Davis’s words on the last night of the conference have been at the forefront of my mind (he lead worship). He reminded us that the devil comes to kill, steal & destroy, and prayed that we would not allow him to take away from us what God did in us at the conference.

So I’ve been praying for myself and others, that whatever God spoke and/or called us to at the conference, that we would stand firm and tell Satan he has no power in our lives. That we would obey what God has called us to & the areas He may have challenged us in.

But I was missing an important piece.

I am now also praying that God the Sustainer would fulfill His Word, being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in us will perfect it (also translating “carry it on to completion”) until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6).

The God who leaned down to earth, who stooped down, to rescue us & make us great.

God is our Sustainer. But we need to accept His gift of sustenance. We need to allow Him to maintain and nurture those things He’s deposited into our hearts.

“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.” 2 Timothy 1:6-7

I need to be reminded that Satan wants to steal God’s best out from under me, just like he did in the Garden of Eden. Satan’s power is limited; God’s power is unlimited.

So my prayer for all of us today is that we would continue to cling to Jesus, that we would allow God to sustain and preserve the good work He has begun in us, that we would be aware of the work of Satan, but not intimidated by him.

God is Sustainer.

Read these Scriptures. Pray through them. Memorize them. Devour them. Soak them in.

Psalm 54:4
Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me.

Psalm 55:22
Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.

Psalm 89:21
My hand will sustain him; surely my arm will strengthen him.

Psalm 119:116
Sustain me according to your promise, and I will live; do not let my hopes be dashed.

Psalm 119:175
Let me live that I may praise you, and may your laws sustain me.

Psalm 146:9
The LORD watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked.

Psalm 147:6
The LORD sustains the humble but casts the wicked to the ground.

Lent: Moderation & Consecration

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Lent is upon us.

Recently, my kids were quite sick. During that time, I was surprised by an unexpected blessing: I had to slow way down.

When I was sitting with a sick kid or stuck under a sleeping baby, my iPhone options were boring me. Thus, I got back into the habit of actually reading books!

We were also unable to go to church due to lingering illness, so I read Acts 22 (no special reason – I’m reading through Acts and that’s the chapter I was on), as well as that day’s reading from My Utmost for His Highest. Then we watched a pastor friend’s church service over the internet.

As I found a few minutes to pray, I was thinking of the upcoming Lenten season and what, if anything, God would have me do during that time. The line “Make My Life a Prayer To You” came to mind.

So I began to sing through the lyrics:
Make my life a prayer to You, I want to do what you want me to,
No empty words and no white lies, no token prayers, no compromise
I want to shine the light you gave Through Your Son, you sent to save us,
From ourselves and our despair. It comforts me to know you’re really there.

Oh, I want to thank you now, for being patient with me
Oh, it’s so hard to see when my eyes are on me
I guess I’ll have to trust and just believe what you say
Oh, you’re coming again, coming to take me away

I want to die, and let you give Your life to me, so I might live,
And share the hope You gave to me – The love that set me free,
I want to tell the world out there You’re not some fable or fairy tale
That I made up inside my head: You’re God, The Son, You’ve risen from the dead.

I want my days to be free of rituals and compromise of any sort. I want my entire life, every moment, to be a living sacrifice, wholly devoted to serving Him and others. I know there are areas that I do still falter or willfully disobey. I want to learn to submit them to Him.

This Lent for me will be a time of moderation & consecration, a time where I ask God to cleanse my life of any idolatry (the song “Give Us Clean Hands” also keeps coming to mind), a time to continue on the journey of becoming all God created me to do so that I can do all the things He has called me to do.

And when I falter and I am not able, I will choose to remember that He is able.

Freedom Fridays: Make It a Break-out Year

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It’s Freedom Friday!! And I’m taking yet another break from the series, “Learning to Walk in Freedom”, to talk yet again about the holiday that is upon us.

It’s New Years.

Are you making resolutions this year? Lose weight, quit smoking, cut down on your Starbucks spending….

How about making some freedom resolutions?

Back in 2003 or 2004, I started a new way of creating resolutions (my former pastor’s wife taught me this practice). Rather than focusing on specific things I wanted to change, I started to do the following:

1. Brainstorm the different roles you have in your life. Here are a few examples: wife, mom, friend, musician, child of God, daughter, etc.

2. Pray, and using God’s direction, pick 2-3 that you’d like to work on for the year.

3. Brainstorm statements about what you’d like to improve upon (priorities).

4. Formulate goals accordingly.

Here’s another things I learned. Goals should be SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timed

A quick note about goal-setting and figuring out if your goals are “SMART”: try to think about whether or not your goal is something that someone would be able to hold you accountable to. If you say, “I’d like to read the Bible more” or “I’d like to make more Christian friends”, it’s not really measurable or specific enough, so someone wouldn’t be able to hold you accountable to that. But it also needs to be realistic. Saying, “I’m going to read the whole Bible in a day” isn’t really attainable nor is it realistic. Saying, “I’m going to find a weekly Bible study to join in the next 3 months” or “I’m going to read a chapter of the Bible 5 days a week” would fit the SMART model.

Think of a way to frame your goals so that you can assess whether or not you’ve reached them. Some goals may be more general and those are the ones that are more difficult to narrow down. Another question you could ask yourself is what are some practical steps I could take to achieve this goal?

Here are some examples of what I’ve done, in terms of brain-storming roles and making priorities and goals out of them.

For 2005, my focus roles were:
Lover of God
Worshiper
Wife
Healer
Recoverer

Yes, I chose too many, but as the year progressed, it became clear which ones were to be my main focus.

Based on that, my list of priorities:

To Keep my Focus on God:
• In My Actions
• In My Marriage
• In My Recovery
• In My Music and Singing
• In My Work with Others

That year, I ended up really focusing on healing. That focus naturally overflowed into my other relationships and roles. Practically, I focused on healing by growing in my understanding of who God is and who I am as His daughter, through reading the Bible and Christian books, listening to Christian speakers, growing in my friendships and praying. I unfortunately cannot find my specific goals that I set, but you get the picture.

Here’s what I wrote at the end of 2005 as I reflected on my resolutions.

2005 has been a “breakout” year for me, truly. I heard a pastor preach on this theme at the beginning of the year, and I embraced it.

It was a choice.

And it was a hard choice, but healing and victory and joy and freedom are always choices that we can make, if that’s what we truly want. If it’s not what we want, then we will keep making the same mistakes. I decided I didn’t want to live that way anymore. And praise be to God, I’m choosing not to live that way anymore, with God’s help.

When you look toward 2011, what are your hopes and dreams? What are you looking forward to?

Do you want it to be a “break-out” year, like 2005 was for me?

What roles or areas of your life can you focus on in order to make it a break-out year?

Do you need to go to counseling, find a mentor, get a life/freedom coach, join a Bible study or support group, start going to church regularly, pray for God to re-make you, allow His spirit to illuminate who He is in new ways?

In the sermon I referenced above, my pastor played the Switchfoot song, “Dare You To Move.” I wasn’t super-familiar with the song, but I walked away thinking, over and over, “I dare you to move.”

Today you have a choice: to stay stuck in the same place, doing the same things that are not working for you, or you can allow God to move you into true freedom.

I dare you to move.

I dare you to trust that the God of the universe has a vested interest in seeing you learn to walk into freedom.

Make a choice today: to do whatever it takes to make 2011 a break-out year for you.

Exodus North Atlantic Regional Conference This Weekend!

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If you follow my posts on the Exodus International Blog, you know that the Exodus North Atlantic Regional Conference is this weekend! In fact, my family & I will leave tomorrow to attend an evening music rehearsal. Pray for us! My kids don’t always love the car 🙂 I’ll be leading the music, as well as sharing a re-worked version of my testimony, entitled “What’s in a name?” I’m quite excited. I’ll definitely share the testimony either here or over at the Exodus International Blog – I’ll let you know 🙂

Hope to see you there!

Peace

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I got the best compliment yesterday. I bumped into an old friend at a ministry event. We got to chatting, and he said I seem “at peace with life.” He definitely got me thinking.

Peace, like so much else, is really a choice. I have a choice in how I allow myself to respond to the chaos and challenges I face every day. The Bible has quite a few references to eagles, and in particular God raising us up on eagles’ wings. I recently learned that during storms, an eagle can be found soaring above the clouds, totally unaffected and almost unaware of the storm raging below them.

That’s what I want to experience. When the storms come, I want to know that I know that God is in control. Just as Jesus rebuked the waves and the wind in Matthew 8, I can choose to trust that God is Lord over the storms in my life. He may not have caused them, but He has power and dominion over them.

So yes, I do feel very content, peaceful, joyful – even happy lots of the time. It’s been a long road to get to this place! I can only pray that 10 years down the road, I have even more moments of peace in my life.

Boston Exodus Training and the Protestors

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Earlier this week, Alive in Christ (the ministry I direct), Park Street Church (the church that hosts the ministry) and Exodus International (the organization of which Alive in Christ is a member) hosted a Boston training event for pastors, ministry leaders, seminary students, educators, and counselors on how to respond to the issue of homosexuality with biblical truth and compassion.

We knew there was a protest scheduled during the day, with well-known speakers and gay activists attending, such as Wayne Besen and Arlene Isaacson. We had several protesters come to the meeting and stand up in the middle of speaking sessions to “demonstrate”; I’ll spare you the details 🙂

One side of the room we were meeting in is completely covered in windows. Outside the windows is a historic cemetery that tourists walk through. A group of probably 20-30 protesters came up to the windows to scream loudly at us through a bullhorn and try and take pictures of the attendees. They shouted some mantras, such as “Exodus, Exodus, Quack, Quack, Quack! You can’t change gays; that’s a fact!” and “Ex-gay, no way! Don’t believe a word they say!” It’s fairly clear from those two statements that they really have no idea what we were talking about in the training or the even the mission of Exodus. That is even more clear if you watch some of the footage of the continued protest and the words of the speakers.

As I was thinking about the anti-Exodus protesters leading up to the conference, I realized they are sort of missing the point. The problem in their minds is Exodus; if they could shut Exodus down somehow, the problem is solved. But Exodus didn’t form for the sake of Exodus; Exodus was created because people all over the United States were seeking out this type of ministry. People were not satisfied with the label of “born gay” that was slapped on them.

The protesters need to realize that shutting down Exodus will not change the need – the need in people’s heart for a different answer, for a different life. They may not experience that need, but that will not change the fact that thousands of others, like myself, desired to be obedient to what we saw in God’s Word and what we felt He was calling us to do. And when we were willing to surrender that area of our lives to God, when we were willing to do whatever it would take to walk in obedience to Him, what He gave us in return was far better than anything we could ever have imagined.

Speaking at Park Street on Sunday

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I just found out on Wednesday that the ministry I direct is having its “ministry moment” on Sunday, at all 4 services at Park Street. That means I have a 3 minute window to speak and share our heart 🙂 I am currently in California as you know, visiting family, and will be returning to Boston at 5:30 AM on Sunday morning, having flown all night with a toddler who doesn’t sleep well on planes. For those who pray, please pray that our flight goes as planned, and that I can get to the church on time! I’d be so bummed to miss this opportunity, as we’ve been trying to schedule it for 2 years.

Being Literal

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I recently got a book from the library that an acquaintance recommended. She didn’t recommend it for the parenting advice, but more for the thoughts on having children, birth control, marriage, etc. I was really enjoying the book until I came upon the section on training a child. The book’s author advised not to listen to any of the parenting experts & didn’t offer much counsel of her own, but she did share a couple of readers’ stories which promptly made me lose my interest in the book due to some of their “training methods”. When I asked my acquaintance about it, she said she didn’t really listen to the parenting advice, but simply absorbed wisdom from the other topics of interest in this author’s books.

I have only recently realized how literal I am. I am very, very literal. And I really struggle with reading a book and accepting any of its advice when I strongly disagree with certain aspects of it.

This hit home again recently when one of the blogs I read referenced a teaching by someone I know vaguely, but have heard a lot about from people who do know him. I know this person is not a person of integrity, and therefore, I couldn’t really absorb the teaching. This same issue has come up before in ministry circles. I’m not able to quote authors in my talks or articles who I know disagree with the fundamental premise of why I do the type of ministry that I do. Others can easily quote those whom they may disagree with on certain topics, even if those topics are the core of their ministry, because they simply figure they will not agree with everyone on everything.

To my other literal readers – are you like this? Or are you able to take what you like & leave the rest, as the 12 steps would say? To my less literal readers – are you able to sort of separate the things you agree & disagree with? One of my campus ministry leaders I know always said not to dismiss truth simply because of its source. Generally, I think that’s good advice, but sometimes, I have a really hard time separating any “truth” I might be able to absorb from its source if that source has foundations I strongly disagree with.

Thoughts?