Dear Christian, someone told me early in my discipleship journey to “just” read my Bible. Read it in the “black and white” and “let it speak to you.” So I did. And I got lost mostly because I didn’t cling to a good “Paul” in my life who would teach me HOW to rightly divide the Word. I lacked someone teaching me that understanding the heart of God involved more than just reading the “black and white.” The Pharisees held to the black and white, and they totally missed God and led others away from Him, too.
I got to the head covering part and wondered if I was doing something wrong. I got to the women be silent scriptures and felt even more wrong. I got to the gentle and meek part, and because I didn’t understand those things in the same way they were intended, I felt even more wrong because I’m strong-willed and bold. I tried to convince myself that even though I was wrong, wrong, wrong, I was still loved and could be used if I could just obey the text I had read for myself that was “obvious” in black and white and submit to my husband. And those literal instructors would offer texts to me on a platter to put me in my rightful place, the “role” God had intended for me to walk in.
But I felt called to more than just be a “good and godly” this or that. The Jesus who wrecked my heart and sought me out of the oppressiveness of my worldly sin didn’t draw me in supernaturally, deliver me from addiction, stop my bleeding, and heal my wounds just so other people could burden me down with just another kind of oppression (religious.)
I wasn’t designed to be tied down and forced to stare at myself and focus all my attention on my wrongness. It wasn’t my wrongness that drew me to Christ in the first place. It was His goodness. He didn’t call me by His Holy Spirit to leave Him behind at the sinner’s prayer I had prayed!
I love the Bible. It’s the Word of God. It’s holy and authoritative and profitable when it’s rightly divided. Too many people are falling into deception because they’re not being taught how to rightly divide the Sacred Text. Hear me out: the black and white printed words are not God. The Bible is not the Holy Spirit. Looking out at the landscape of church culture, I see people who want God but can’t see Him because they have made the “black and white” an idol. They’ve taken their own hammers to the rock of truth and have chipped off one doctrine after another of their own understanding to build their own houses. If I’m not mistaken, broken-off pieces of rock are also known as sand.
If you don’t allow God the authority to offend your understanding of ScrScriptureth, the truth of His Scripture, then your understanding has become the idol you worship. You can call the golden calf Jesus all day, but that doesn’t make your idol the real Jesus… it’s still just a counterfeit. The enemy specializes in producing counterfeit things, so should we really be surprised when they’re exposed? The fact that idols are revealed to us is proof of God’s mercy. It’s extended to us not to puff ourselves up with more knowledge but to humble ourselves and REPENT! Revival isn’t going to come when the world gets all their crap together. It will come when the people of God decide to break down and destroy every idol that’s taken Christ’s rightful place in their own hearts. Planks add more fuel to the revival fire than a truckload of specks ever could!
Friends, you weren’t designed to simply fill the role of a good husband, mother, father, teacher, wife, worker, worship leader, prophet, or whatever. You weren’t DESIGNED to be your spouse’s other “half.”
You weren’t designed to fall into a cookie-cutter mold that someone else says you should fit in because someone else told them they should, so you should, too. I’m pretty sure that’s how the Pharisees made their disciples to be twice the children of hell that they were.
YOU WERE DESIGNED TO LOVE GOD AND BE LOVED BY HIM. If we kept first things first, aren’t all the other things supposed to fall into place after that? (Seek first the kingdom? It’s the King that makes the kingdom.)
How did I get to this strange pattern of thinking? I thank God the Holy Spirit didn’t just stay where I wanted Him to! He led me by the Holy Spirit and is still leading me into His intended purpose, revealing truth WITHIN the same ScrScriptureat once bound me! And He led me to people who loved Him more than they loved their own understanding. He taught me how to fear Him rightly so I could be led by faith, not by my insecurity and fear. He led me to trust and gave me eyes to see.
He led me to His heart by showing me how to understand the texts that once confused me. He showed me how to read beyond the black-and-white numbered verses by highlighting the significance of each passage’s historical and cultural context.
And, just like He wrecked me all those years ago, He came once again into my prison and ripped off the chains others had placed on me. He set me free all over again. That’s why I sing!
I feel like a bird singing outside of a dark stained-glass window, irritating the sleepers inside who don’t want to wake up to a new day. It’s easy to live lazy and complacent in your own theology. I mean, you can dream of doing great things without ever actually doing them! But is that really life?
The vastness of His love is far more incredible than we can imagine in our dreaminess. He wants to show us more, but we must wake up first! He’s called the church to repentance.
Revival will not be held captive to the 4 walls we’ve gotten so comfortable in. It’s not going to be some neat and tidy party where everyone uses coasters to protChurch’schurch’s sacred wood tables and then sweeps their own dirt off the floor they tracked in. No, he’s calling us to greater things, to humble ourselves, serve others more, and fly in the winds of His Presence with songs of praise on our lips!
His order is established in Him, released through Him, and we have our being because of Him. It’s time for our pride, the self-righteous god of our understanding, to bow its knee to the Creator of the Universe. It’s time to remember our first love and let that love drive us to lift Christ up. And when Christ is TRULY exalted, evangelism becomes less about what we can do as the Holy Spirit draws people to Himself! I can’t help but wonder how many “children of God” we’ve mothered (or babied) church who have never been fathered. Yeah, I went there. It’s time to lift our eyes from our works that have continued despite being divorced from His beautiful Presence.
There’s a freedom far greater than the freedom you’ve been told you already have but have never truly experienced.
It may feel like your wings have been cut by the black and white, but I’ve seen my God make broken wings strong again. Come sing with me! Join me in song and wake up to gaze upon the beauty of the Risen Christ once again!
Revival is here because Christ is alive! Wake up and step out! Be free to seek Him with your heart, mind, soul, and strength. You might “feel” safer inside, but you’ll bury yourself alive and then die in your lukewarmness.
Feeling safe and being safe aren’t always the same thing. Christ wants to gather us up together under his wings! He decided long ago he wouldn’t be bound to a little box forever.
Stay in the Word and read the Bible, but find Him in the truth of who He really is according to ALL of it in context and not in merely the broken-off, twisted, black-and-white scriptures pulled from here and there to lead you somewhere else. Build your life on the Rock; leave the sandy broken pieces behind!
Finding the context is the key to discovering His heart for you in the scrScriptureeek Him, and you’ll find Him. It’s risky. It’s costly. It might sound annoying to the sleepers, but life—the abundant life He desires us to have, led by His Presence, established in truth, full of joy—is worth it.
And maybe someday those drowsy, sleepyheads, crabby church people will wake up and join the songs of those who have rediscovered their first love & are so happy they just can’t shut up about how awesome their bridegroom is!
You’ve been invited. The alarm is going off. It’s time to get up. Won’t you come?
Write Now! 