It’s been 20 months. I’ve known it could happen. I’ve thought about what it would be like when it did. It exceeded my expectations. There, sitting in the pew next to me, where two beautiful ladies recently released from jail. One had been out for four months, the other for only a few days. It was a Wednesday night, the last night of our Crusade. There had been powerful preaching going on already for four services and I knew the last night was bound to be awesome. It was even more awesome to have my sweet sisters in Christ sitting with me in the service, Bibles in their laps, nodding and saying “Amen”! It had been that very day that I’d received a call from Shavonne*. We had talked previously on Sunday afternoon. I had been to the jail that afternoon and the girls were telling me she’d been released. I was so happy for and wondered if I’d hear from her. Over the last year and a half, I’d met and corresponded with several ladies who said they would let me know when they got released, but then never did. So I was so thrilled when my phone rang and it was my friend, Shavonne. She told me she was doing good and glad to be getting her life back together; that this time it was going to include God! I told her about the Crusade going on and invited her to come. She said she’d let me know which night would work best for her and promised to be in touch. A couple of days passed and finally, on Wednesday afternoon, she called me and told me she’d like to come. I promised to come and pick up her up along with her two precious kids in time for supper at church! Then just a few minutes later I was listening to a voice mail I’d gotten and it was from Tecorra*. She’d been out of jail for four months and hearing her happy voice on the phone just filled me with joy. I knew from our correspondence that she had a job and was staying busy. I found out she’s recently moved into her own place and silently I was lifting Praise to God for seeing how His hand of faithfulness has been with Tecorra. I invited her to come to Crusade with me and she immediately said yes! I have seen these women at their lowest. I have held their hand in the cell block as we prayed together. I have seen them surrender their lives and be baptized in a horse trough filled with ice cold water. I have waved at them from the hallway as i had to pass by their cell to go minister in another one. I have penned letters to them, hoping that they would be encouraged to keep fighting the fight even in the midst of such gloomy surroundings. Gloomy is defined as: dark or poorly lit, especially so as to appear depressing or frightening. That pretty much describes the jail. I know. It’s not supposed to be cheerful. I know. It’s not supposed to be a place they want to come back to. I know. But would it hurt to have some encouraging words painted on the wall at least? What if all someone needed was a little spark of hope to encourage them to change? You could paint the words way up high on the dank, grey wall, so that no one would could mess with it. It would just be there. Like a little tiny light shining down a dark hole. Ok, I’ll get off my soap box now. I was looking at two women who had survived; who had beat the odds. Two women who found Jesus in the Jail and they weren’t letting go! I just could have bust with joy sitting next to them. They just looked like beautiful angels to me. All I’d ever seen of them clothed in before was a jumpsuit issued to them at the jail. Now please understand, that’s not all I SEE when we’re at the jail. God allows me to see much more than what they are wearing. In fact, one of my goals in going to the jail is to help those beautiful ladies see themselves as God sees them…..redeemed by His love. I can SEE the potential in their lives. I can SEE what God wants to do through their lives if they’ll simply trust. The thrill was that now I was SEEING that reality sitting beside me. The two women as I pictured them, radiant and serving Christ with the second chance He’d given them. That night the evangelist preached on Jonah. I think his sermon title was something like “Going Down the Wrong Road.” We all nodded our heads at that. Seen that messy road. Been there, done that. The Word was so applicable that night. God sent a whale to swallow Jonah so he would stop running and get on the path ordained by God. God giving Jonah a second chance. God allowed my friends to be swallowed up by some disasters in their lives, and then provided a jail as a way to stop their progress in the wrong direction. He ordained Patti and I to go in and share the gospel with them. We never take that moment for granted. When women raise their hand if they want to pray and receive Jesus. When they sign a list if they want to be baptized. We pray with them. We baptize them. We leave Bibles and devotional books. We encourage as best we can. We know the odds may be against us. It’s just a “jailhouse conversion” some people say. “It won’t last.” “They’ll be back to their old ways as soon as they’re released.” Maybe that’s why I had tears in my eyes that night at Crusade. I saw evidence that we serve a God who keeps what we’ve committed to Him as the word says in 1 Timothy 1:12 “for I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return.” And by the way, that was Paul writing from jail! *names used with permission
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“Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise Your name.” Psalm 142:7 David sure had a way with words. 1 Samuel 16:18 “Then one of the servants answered and said, “Look, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person; and the Lord is with him.” “Prudent in speech” means He was wise with his choice of words and there was much thought and wisdom in what he said. We have evidence of that over and over in the Psalms. This morning I was reading through Psalm 142. The caption in my Bible says “A Prayer when he was in the cave.” I’ve never been in a real cave before but I’ve seen plenty of them in movies. Dark and damp are two words that immediately come to mind. Bats, crawly things, hard rocks for a pillow and dirt for a bed. Nothing I would willingly walk into. Unless I’m in hiding. And even then, you can bet I would have been fussing about it. “What am I doing here? Really? What has it come to that I ended in a cave? God, don’t’ you care about me?” Verse 2 tells us that David poured out his complaint before God and declared His trouble. It wasn’t so much a “where are you God?” but more of a “ok, here I am God. I know you know, but it does my heart good to say it.” Because in the very next verse, it says when His spirit was overwhelmed within him he says “Then You knew my path, in the way in which I walk.” David poured out his cry and was immediately assured that God was aware of his path. When we become overwhelmed in our “cave” and we cry out to God, the Comforter always comes and reminds us that God does indeed know where we are. He’s aware of our every step. That makes all the difference to me. If I’m hiding in a cave, I just want to know that God sees me. Cause it can get awful cold and dark in a cave. David must have suffered some discouragement there because we come to one of the most vulnerable statements he makes: “Bring my soul out of prison.” That really stopped me in my tracks when I read that. It so perfectly describes how desperate life can be sometimes. Our soul can literally feel as if it’s locked up. Every Sunday I see women who have been picked up and put in jail for one reason or another. They never meant to end up there. They could never imagine that the things they were doing would get them locked up. They are in shock and trying to figure out the next steps. It’s kind of like that when our soul is locked up. I know It was like that for me when my soul was locked up. I never thought through where my small steps of disobedience would take me. After all, it was just a small step. I know what you’re thinking…one small step leads to another and then another, right? The thing is, when you’re the one taking the small steps in the wrong direction, it becomes amazingly easy to justify what you’re doing. And anyone who says something is just being too critical and self-righteous. So I kept on taking those small steps. The Holy Spirit was faithful to talk to me, but I was more and more determined to ignore Him. After all, I was a church girl. I wasn’t one of those “heathens”. I was raised doing it all right. Surely I had enough sense of direction to take care of myself by now. WRONG! How dumb could I be? You might as well have just handed me the key so I could lock myself up cause I was building my own steel bars of disobedience that would make for a nice big cell. It wasn’t David’s disobedience that had his soul locked up (although disobedience would come later), but he was crying out for the Lord to restore and lift him up so that “I may praise your name”. He’d been brought low because of his enemies. Sometimes you can be your own worst enemy. I have been. I listened to my own reasoning, I made my own decisions based on that faulty reasoning, and I lived with an unhappy soul…..a soul that was locked up. I could still smile at church though and no one would have a clue. I’m so aware of that now as I sing to “Christian” audiences…..you may look good, adorned in the appropriate church clothing with your Bible in tow, but you could be as locked up as the inmate on 120 Prison Farm Road. Psalm 142:1 is for all of us, “I cry out to the Lord with my voice.” He does hear us. He’s always listening for the call of His child. The call of repentance. The sound of the prideful heart crashing to the floor of the cave. Being broken saved me….kind of like the Sri Lankan frogmouth. Frog what you ask? The Sri Lankan frogmouth. Lest you think I’m an avid bird expert, I’ll tell you right now I’d never ever heard of one before last week. I was reading some blog (I can’t remember which one….i read a bunch!) and that’s how I discovered the little cutie. They are quite interesting little creatures; nocturnal, they prefer to keep to themselves. They have their own unique song they sing in the morning and then again in the evening. They aren’t dressed as glamorously as say the Painted bunting or Scarlet macaw, they are rather plain looking. In fact, they mostly resemble a tree branch with their brown feathers and grey whispy patches on their breast that resembles moss. They use this coloring to their advantage. I guess when God created them, He knew they would need a defensive device to ward off predators and so He whispered in their ear and told them what to do. Whenever they feel alerted to danger, they will stretch out their bodies and point their beak upward and to a predator (and to you and me), they can easily be mistaken for a jagged, broken branch. The predator, noticing nothing unusual, moves on. Being a “broken branch” is what saves them. Broken equals life. Now that’s not your typical equation, but God isn’t in the business of typical. He’s in the miracle making business. And He seems to like to work with broken things. A man on the run who is a broken and disheartened herder of sheep until he sees a burning bush. A weeping King crying “Restore to me the joy of my salvation”. A man in chains with a fresh haircut and a simple prayer from his lips, “one more time Lord.” A disillusioned man who had once pledged his faith with boldness but now cursed and denied it repeatedly, three times to be exact. Growing up in the church, I heard the stories of these men over and over, and countless other stories of brokenness. My father, a preacher of the gospel, could deliver a sermon about these men in a way that had you standing on holy ground right next to Moses. So close you could feel the heat coming off your Bible as if the bush had been lit right before you. I was enthralled with the stories. God speaking out of a bush on fire? God telling Noah to pick up a hammer? God revealing to Rahab that it might indeed be wise to hide two spies? God calling Peter “The Rock on which I’ll build my church”? But as I look back, I realize I was always just waiting for the happy ending. Moses would cross the Red Sea with the Israelites. Noah would survive a flood and build an altar. Rahab would be saved along with her family. Peter would indeed go on to be a Holy Ghost Preacher. Those were the parts I couldn’t wait to get too! We all like a happy ending, yes? I am such a believer in happy endings that I used to always read the last line of a book before I purchased it. If the last line had anything sad sounding at all in it like…tears, she was alone, and then he died, etc…..I would close that book up and keep looking. I know that’s crazy! I mean what if “she was alone” WAS a happy ending? Who can know when you haven’t even read the story? I think I was just afraid of drudging through the hard stuff that leads to the happy ending, you know? I guess that’s why I wasn’t ready for my broken. My wilderness. My mess. I thought I could skip all that to the happy ending. I mean, can we just get on with this God? Can’t you make me patient without making me wait? Can’t you develop perseverance without giving me a trial? Can’t you give me humility and compassion without crushing my proud spirit? Turns out the answer to all that was a loving, but firm, no. But here’s the thing I’ve learned. God knew a predator was after me. God knew what things He still had for me to do. And He knew the one way to save me was to allow me to be broken. It wasn’t easy. There were hard years. Very hard years. But God was faithful and brought me through. There’s a bird somewhere in Sri Lanka that still sits on branch and sings his song at the sunrise and sunset of each day because he looks like a jagged, broken branch. I still have a song to sing. I look a lot like a jagged, broken branch too. And at the sunrise and sunset of each day, I will faithfully sing to my Maker. I need to improve my diet. I’m not talking about more vegetables and less snacks, I’m talking about more words of affirmation and less words of criticism. I’ve never considered myself a person who was overly critical. I figured I had just the right amount of criticism in my diet. There are things we have a right to be critical about, yes? The dictionary defines Critical as “expressing adverse or disapproving comments or judgments.” I can express my disapproval of the way other people drive, or of the waiter who delivers poor service, or of the way someone chooses to dress. I’m just stating my opinion, right? The problem for me is knowing when to stop. I can't stop having an opinion. I mean everything that happens causes a response in my thoughts. If the driver in front of me does something crazy like turning without a signal, I’m going to respond. Most likely by yelling to the windshield as if they can hear me “what are you doing? Signal? hello?!!” And an opinion forms in my head…... “Person in front of me. You’re a crazy driver!” If I’m out for dinner and we have a waiter that keeps forgetting to bring us requested items or is particularly slow, I’ll state my opinion. “Our waiter is so slow it’s driving me crazy.” “Can you believe they forgot the extra butter, again?” I’ve formed an opinion: terrible waiter. Maybe those are innocent enough. I mean after all, haven’t we all had a crazy driver around us that MADE us want to scream out loud? Haven’t we all had poor service at a restaurant that makes us want to collect the check and never go back. Or at least make sure we don’t get the same waiter again? When does criticism start being excessive? And what is it that’s really bothering me about being critical? Well let me start with what brought all of this to my attention. It was a Bible verse shared at a conference a few weeks ago. I know I’ve heard it before. Maybe it was the way she “broke it down” that made it really stand out. Susie Larson was speaking and she told us that our words are like seeds we scatter on the ground and they reap a harvest that we will eat. Then she quoted Proverbs 18:20 “A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled.” I immediately pictured myself in a field surrounded by large plants. Nothing you would recognize, like corn or wheat or sunflowers. Plants that were dripping with the fruit of negative, critical words and thoughts. Because face it…even thinking it is like forming the seed that you’re about to plant. I imagined myself pulling the fruit off those plants and how yucky it would taste. Bitter. Probably rotten. If it was any other fruit, wouldn’t I take it and throw it as far away from me as I could? Yet here I was, swallowing it whole. And planting more. I went home and looked at Proverbs 18:20. Not realizing that another verse I was very familiar with was listed next. Verse 21: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” We have all heard that words are powerful. That when you say something, you can never take it back. I’ve always thought of that in relation to other people….to what they’re hearing me say. I’ve never thought about it in relation to me. Now here I am seeing that not only does it affect my relationship with other people, but I’m partaking, I’m ingesting the very words I speak. And they can become death or life to me. I’m choosing a diet of life or a diet of death, depending on what I plant with my words. When is criticism too much? I guess we all have to answer that question for ourselves. In the definition of critical it mentions that we’re making “disapproving comments or judgments." Maybe it’s the “judgement” word that bothers me the most. When I make a judgement about someone, I really should have all the facts. But I rarely do. The driver in front me acting sporadically? Maybe they just received a phone call that’s devastated them and they are in a hurry to reach the bedside of a loved one. The waiter who can’t get it right? Maybe she’s trying to figure out how she’s going to make rent this month and her anxious mind can’t focus? What about the other folks or situations I’m critical of…..do I know all the facts? Again, probably not. What if I could change the verbiage I’m using? Would if I could plant different seeds? “That poor driver. Jesus, take the wheel!” “Our waiter must need some prayer today. She’s tired and dragging” I’d rather eat a fruit that is sweet and pleasant than bitter fruit any day. Ever bitten into a strawberry not yet ripened? Sour! Yuk! But a delicious, mouth-watering, ripe strawberry is a delight to the tongue, it can make your whole mouth sing! What are you planting? Show and Tell
I’ve always been a pleaser This is hard for me To pull back the curtain from my face And simply just be You probably wouldn’t know it I seem confident in my skin Yet I’m always trying endlessly To find a way to fit in If you laugh, I’ll laugh along with you If you’re a diva, I’ll step aside If you’re quiet, I can take the lead And if you’re lost, I’ll be your guide I’m the helper, I’m the giver I want to make everyone else feel good But when it comes to knowing what I need I don’t know it like I should I can speak up and fight for others I can defend them tooth and nail But when it comes to saying what I want I get scared and bail So this is me trying to be honest No more games of show and tell I have to expose it all or else i lose myself I had the opportunity to hear Susie Larson speak this weekend. I had never met or even heard of this lady before. She’s an author and a host of her own radio show called “Live the Promise.” She’s from Minnesota. Ah ha! That’s why I’ve never heard of her. She may be the first Minnesotan I’ve ever met! It was at a women’s conference in Tifton. A sign-up sheet was being passed around in our Sunday School class a few weeks ago and when I saw that Nichole Nordeman was going to be there, I knew I couldn’t miss it! You just don’t know how much I love that girl! Her songs, that voice……… So I signed up and went, not recognizing the names of either of the two speakers, but that didn’t matter, because, um, like I said before, Nichole!!! Susie was up first that morning and she came out to a podium situated between two small tables. One table was lavishly decorated with a beautiful white table cloth, a silver tea set, an elegant candelabra, a bowl of delicious fruit and a basket full of bread. The other table was draped with what appeared to be a gunny sack and contained only a tin cup and some small grains of bread on a tin plate. Susie began to talk to us about the two tables; one was The Heir table and one was The Orphan table. One was set with an abundance of good things, the other with only leftovers. As Children of the King, she reminded us that we’re invited, by God’s Grace, to sit at the Heir Table, yet some of us feel so insecure in our relationship with God that we sit at the Orphan’s table. “Orphans beg and plead, Heirs pray and believe” she declared. She acknowledged that we all face storms, trials and discouragement in our lives, but we should not let that cause us to doubt God or that we’re still an Heir to His Kingdom. She reminded us that the enemy wants to keep us discouraged, because discouragement can keep us from Divine Appointment! She also said this, “Storms can reveal the lies we believe and the truths we need”! How good is that? How deep is that? I’m like any of you travelers, I’m not asking to go through a storm. I don’t enjoy bad weather (except when I’m safe in my house tucked in with a good book). Based on what Susie said, it causes me to want to review the storms I have faced. What lie have I believed in the storm? And what lie about God’s truths have I believed? Have I doubted that God cares? Have I doubted that God really sees me? Does He know each hair on my head? Really? Have I believed I am worthless because of the storm I was in? Ever been there? The storm rages and you wonder what you did to cause it? You think if you had just a little more of that mustard seed faith, you wouldn’t have ended up there? Lies, all lies! God has not abandoned you or has turned His face from you. He is carefully holding you even when you don’t feel it. Susie said she learned to “move my weight onto the truth, even when I didn’t feel it.” I wondered, what does that mean exactly? What does it mean to “move my weight onto the truth?” As I’ve thought about it, for me, it means a couple of things. One, I am going to put all my focus into believing God and taking Him at His word. It means when I read the scriptures, I will read them OUT LOUD and DECLARE my belief as I do. Secondly, it means that I will LEAN on God and refuse to dwell in defeat. It means I will not move over to the Orphan’s table as though I am a beggar who needs to beg God to see me. I will remain at the Table of the Heir, as a beloved Child of God and wait to see how He will choose to supply my needs. I will put my “weight” on God and wait! Romans 8:17 “Now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ the Son of God.” I don’t know if I can fully grasp all that it means to be a co-heir with Christ; to know that I’ve been adopted in the family as if I always belonged. I do know this though, when I call on God, He is near. I have that promise because it is in His word. And because you are a child of God, you have the same promise. ALL His Children can claim that. When Susie closed her first session, she share something else I’d like to leave with you. Life doesn’t always “look” like we think it should. We obviously didn’t calculate the storm to show up or be as severe as it was. We expected something different. But here’s something to remember about our expectations, they can also be called “pre-meditated disappointment”. I’m setting myself up for disappointment if I “expect” something out of God. Instead, try EXPECTANCY. That means I acknowledge that God is “up to something” and His ways are not my ways. There is a mystery in Expectancy and there is a mystery to God. I give Him the freedom to work in my life however He deems necessary. A storm? OK. A blessing. OK. I’m with you God. I won’t move. I’m sitting at Your table. |
AuthorHi! I am Donna and I'm traveling. It's a journey to discover who I am in Christ every day....no looking back, face to the Son! Come join me! Archives
October 2017
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