Dead Weight

My heart has been stirring in me for a while now, directing me toward a big move. This will be the biggest move I've made since graduating high school.

I grew up in the Houston area. After high school, I moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area to attend college. I've been here ever since.

For the past few months, I've been feeling the pull to relocate to a new city. This means a new job, a new place to live and a completely new life. It's particularly challenging because I'm not one to just up and leave.

I've worked for the same organization for 19 years. I've been in the same apartment for 16 years. During the course of my time here I've accumulated stuff. A lot of stuff.

This week I started the process of downsizing. I'm giving stuff away to friends or donating it to Goodwill. Some of the stuff might be considered valuable.

I had a bunch of etched glassware that I gave to a friend. She asked me if the pieces are antiques. I think, since the pieces are at least 70 years old, that etched glassware might be considered antique by some. I don't really know. I don't really care.

I do know that, regardless of how old these pieces might be, they're just stuff.

Really, they're just items. Things. I don't really need them.

There's a difference between what I need and what I want. Most days, I forget that.

So, now I'm in the process of downsizing. I simply don't know what to do with some of the things I've been keeping. Old slides, photos and yearbooks, where the only people who might have some emotional attachment to them are dead.

The question that comes to mind as I process through things is this - When does it become dead weight?

I'm admittedly at the early stages of recovery from being a packrat. The easy way is to hang onto stuff. It's also a bit lazy, I suspect. Just put it way and don't think about it.

The problem with being a packrat is that, eventually, a time will come when the hard work of cleaning house is necessary. We can't spend our lives lugging around things that have been passed down from earlier generations. A lot of it proves to be dead weight.

This is true of emotional and attitudinal things, as well. Downsizing takes work, particularly if it hasn't been done in a while. But I don't think we can live in freedom without it.

As you look at your life, what are you hanging onto that's become dead weight?

Escaping the Comparison Trap

Here is a sneak peek at the devotional I wrote for work this week.

"But we all, with unveiled face,
beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
just as from the Lord, the Spirit."
(2 Corinthians 3:18)

Julia questioned the quality of her faith. She saw others who were comfortable doing and saying things with which she was not yet at ease. Even though, by her own admission, she had been growing in her love of scripture and intimacy with God, she felt pressured to be in the same spiritual place as others in her church.

To Julia’s mind, they were “better Christians” because of the way they expressed their faith in Jesus.

“It’s not a contest,” I told her. “You are not them and they are not you. You are unique in all of creation, just like I am. Every person is a distinctive individual. You have strengths and weakness, just like they do. Your relationship with the Lord and how He works in your life is going to be one of a kind because He made you to be you, and no one else. Really, it’s not a contest!!”

God made each of us to be utterly unique. However, we often evaluate our spiritual growth and ministry by what we see in the lives of others.

The Apostle Paul discussed the marvelous variety of gifts and ministries within the Body of Christ in his first letter to the Corinthians. “There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons.” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6)

As Paul noted, all of the gifts, ministries and effects come from God. It is God who does the work in the Body. It is He who does the work in us individually, as well.

It is very easy to fall into the comparison trap. It takes little effort to see someone else, whose gifts or ministries seem more prominent or evident than ours, and assume that they are more spiritual or mature. We feel like we must compete, but it’s difficult to love someone with whom we are a rival. That sort of rivalry drives a wedge between people.

In his first letter to the Corinthian church, Paul took them to task for divisions that had appeared amongst the people. They fell into the comparison trap and were arguing about who was following whom. Some were saying, “I follow Paul,” while others were saying, “I follow Apollos!” Paul told them, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:6)

The reality is that growth comes from God. Jesus emphasized this principle for Himself when He said that He could do nothing by Himself, and that the Father’s work was done through Him. (John 5:19, 14:10)

Jesus also talked about this in the Gospel of John where He described our relationship with Him as branches on a vine. That connection is what causes the growth. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. We cannot grow, which is necessary for the production of fruit in our lives, if we are disconnected from the vine. The production of fruit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control - is what indicates growth and maturity in a believer. That fruit is what gives glory to the Lord.

When we redirect our focus from connecting with God to what our lives look like in comparison to others’, we lose the life-giving, growth-creating branch-to-vine connection that is essential to spiritual life. We start withering on the vine because we have stepped into a place of rule-keeping where we are measuring ourselves by an incorrect standard, we stifle freedom, and we are no longer allowing the life of the vine to grow us. We’ve traded the freedom of the life of Christ for something that cannot nurture or sustain us.

Our salvation and spiritual growth are gifts we experience because we place our confidence in Christ. We don’t even come to Him, or love Him, without Him wooing our hearts with His love. This leaves no room for boasting or pride, both of which are byproducts of the comparison trap.
Jesus tells the story of a farmer who planted seed as an illustration of the Kingdom of God. The seed sprouts and grows, but the farmer does not understand how it happens. “The earth,” Jesus says, “produces the crops on its own.” (Mark 4:26-28)

The farmer may have created an environment that was healthy for the crops to grow, but he did not cause that growth to take place. The same is true for spiritual disciplines, such as scripture reading and prayer.

While we can cultivate a healthy spiritual environment in our lives, we cannot make ourselves grow. Only God can do that.

Once Julia took her focus off others and redirected it to the Lord, she was able to genuinely recognize the growth she had been experiencing, and felt a freedom and joy that had been missing. Her doubts faded away as she truly saw how God had been working in her life, cultivating and growing her as only He can.

(The complete devotional will be available at http://www.lifetoday.org/)

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Gifted

Not too long ago, a friend proposed the idea that I might be "gifted" and suggested that I connect with a dear friend of hers, a life coach whose focus is gifted children and their parents. I was rather surprised to think that I might be gifted. Honestly, the idea had never entered my mind. I was used to thinking of myself as a lot of things, but never gifted.

Once I connected with Lisa, and we began to talk, I started sharing some of my thoughts and feelings with her. I didn't hide anything. I didn't hide the things about myself that I see as negatives. Her response to me was, "That's classic in gifted people."

It has taken time to adjust to the idea. As I've continued to communicate with Lisa and research what it means to be gifted I find myself becoming much kinder to myself.

Today, I was reading a couple of online articles about being gifted. I found one on the Talent Development Resources site, and the other on the Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted site.

I noticed that both articles said very similar things in their descriptions of the gifted adult. Both articles described traits of a gifted person, addressing the postive and the negative of each characteristic. One of the articles mentioned that the people on whom the article was based exhibited three of the traits discussed.

I recognized myself in both articles. Each trait described is one that I exhibit. Not one or two or three. All of them.

As I continue to research what it means to be gifted, I'm beginning to realize that the isolation I've felt my whole life, the sense of being a weird sort of freakish, high-maintenance and needy person doesn't mean that there's something inherently wrong with me. It doesn't mean I'm crazy. It means I'm gifted.

That's such a load off my shoulders. I'm still amazed by the whole thing. But I'm also sensing a freedom that is new and delightful.

So, what about you? Have you ever considered that perhaps you, too, are gifted?

Growing Up

You're a spiritual teenager...

Huh?

You're about 15 years old...

What? I am??

Michelle, it's okay.

Really?

Really.

Okay. Cool!

I had that conversation with the Lord about a year ago. I had been asking Him what was wrong with me for some time before He finally answered. As surprised as I was by His reply to my persistent questions, my heart was lightened by what He said. I heard laughter in my heavenly Father's voice as He spoke, and His delight warmed me.

Technically, if we count spiritual growth in terms of chronological years, I'm a little over 20-years old. I was born again in July of 1988, at the age of 22. Five months later, I was filled by the the Spirit. What I didn't know at the time was that spiritually I was in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), and that I'd be spending quite some time there.

My background is one of occult involvement, and I had a lot that I needed to unload. As a new Christ-follower, I heard about demonic oppression but it didn't really mean anything to me because I was coming to Christianity with no frame of reference.

When asked about my salvation experience, I usually tell people I was born bassackwards - feet first. I didn't understand about sin or the need for redemption. I didn't understand anything about the Cross, or salvation, or any of the things that I came to understand and appreciate as my relationship with the Lord deepened. All I understood was that God is a Person who loves me, sees me, and wants to be known by me.

This understanding, about the personhood of God, and the love that He has for me, was utterly new. It was such a novel idea that my heart was captured. The rest of me was clueless, which shouldn't have been too surprising because I was reborn with what was tantamount to a spiritual infection.

This spiritual infection was due to the fact that I had grown up in the occult, even though the "church" in which I was primarily raised had the word "Christian" in its name. I've come to see that it wasn't Christian. Not truly. It couldn't be since, by definition, to be Christian means to accept Jesus the Christ as exactly who He claims to be - Lord, Savior, GOD. The Unity Church of Practical Christianity, in which I spent most of my formative years, denies the truth of Jesus. It's a hodge-podge of all sorts of eastern mysticism, reincarnation, spirit guides, ESP, witchcraft, and assorted other occultic practices. Nothing we were taught indicated the unique and divine Personhood of God. Factor in the reality that, as a young teenager, I actively pursued witchcraft and the power it promised and it should be no surprise that I had a lot of darkness in my soul.

So, as a newly born again Christ follower, I was spiritually infected by the malevolent forces that I had embraced while growing up. Light and darkness cannot dwell together and, though I was newly born again, those things which had taken taken hold of my sould did not automatically go away when I said "yes" to Jesus.

Paul told the Philippian church that they were to work out their salvation in "fear and trembling." (Phil. 2:12) When we come to Jesus, we're still lugging our baggage with us. I had to take ownership of my baggage before I could dump it. It had become a nasty, oozing infection that required medical intervention before it could be drained and cleansed. In other words, I needed deliverance.

Deliverance is messy, like draining a pus-filled wound. It's bloody. It hurts. But there is no shame in needing deliverance.

Consider this: In the book of Exodus, God showed the Promised Land to Israel and told the people to go take it. He told them that His angel would go with them to defeat all of those who stood in the way of the Israelites entering into the Promsied Land and making it their own.

"I will not drive them out before you in a single year, that the land may not become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you. I will drive them out before you little by little, until you become fruitful and take possession of the land." (Exodus 23:29-30)

I had to be ready to go through deliverance before it would genuinely benefit me. That's what I mean by saying I was in the NICU. I didn't truly start growing spiritually until the infection of my soul had been drained and cleansed, then it took time to walk out the healing process.

While I might want to leap from childhood to adulthood, and most children do want to grow up quickly, it's not good for me to do so. If you think about it, trying to be more grownup than we actually are is counterproductive to becoming a mature believer. Whenever we try to run before we have learned to walk, we spend a lot of time falling down. We get hurt when we try to take on more than we're mature enough to handle, and those wounds can hobble us if they're not properly tended. That's one of the ways people get stuck in their spiritual growth.

It doesn't help us when we find ourselves battling expectations that are placed on us about who we're supposed to be or how grownup we're supposed to be - whether those expectations are ours, our spiritual parents', fellow believers' or the church's. The Lord is the only Person whose say matters. We have to be willing to genuinely hear His voice, and do what He says, even if it is counterintuitive to what we think we're supposed to do. For me, it meant the NICU and deliverance and healing my inner land.

God took the time He needed, kept me in the spiritual NICU, until I was able to start growing in a healthy way so I could become fruitful and possess my inner land as He promised I would.

It has been a process, a battle and an adventure.

The enemy of our souls comes to kill, steal and destroy. There is nothing more threatening to him than a mature Christ-follower who fruitfully walks in wisdom and power. It's in his interests to keep us blindly stuck somewhere on the road to maturity. If he can hobble us then he can keep one more soldier of Christ out of commission.

We are to "...grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ..." (Ephesians 4:15).

So, last year the Lord told me that I was a spiritual teenager. Hearing that set me free and explained the frustration I'd been feeling. I was given hope, because it meant I was still growing up. I hadn't gotten stuck.

I am still growing up. Jesus isn't going to leave me as a teenager any more than He left me in the NICU. He started a good work in me and He'll finish what He started (Phil 1:6), while I have the pleasure of holding His hand and walking with Him.

What the Lord has done for me, He will do for you. That's His plan: For us all to grow into gloriously mature, wise Christ-followers who are joyfully and freely living and being who He intends us to be.