The Gift Is In The Margin {Silence And Solitude}

Do not be afraid of an empty to-do list. It is in this empty space that His Spirit has the freedom to create. We are each a divine vessel of blessed imperfection, and this is best discovered in the margins of our day, the places where our hearts bleed out and our words fall short.

Dear Saddleback family- What if we stop and meet with Jesus right here and now, inviting Him into the worst and most hurried moment of our day with no agenda other than to simply sit beside Him?

We should know that God sees the small things that nobody else does, those menial tasks which make up the larger whole of our existence.

And so humility is cultivated in solitude, and grace is received in silence.

I say this because Jesus finds me in the most unlikely of places these days.

I will be driving down the highway alone and His Spirit will whisper “Moses felt exactly like you do right now when I gave him the commission to return to Egypt.” And I will feel better about my doubts, because I am reminded that doubt is Biblical. Doubt is not the opposite of faith, it is the unfolding of it as we grow up into Him. And I am humbled by the revelation.

I will be sorting laundry, a great pile of warm towels, when He will suddenly draw close and tell me “I am going to speed up your healing and come very close to you.” And I will feel better about my weaknesses, because I am reminded that they are covered in grace and part of a divine plan to heal both myself and the whole world.

I will be standing in the shower at the end of the day, questioning myself about where I may have gone wrong in the last twelve waking hours, and He will speak the words “No condemnation”. Plain and simple, powerful and true; relief and gratitude come all at once like a wave.

Yes, humility is cultivated in solitude, and peace comes on the ringing ears of a silent room.

It has been the quiet times with Him that have been the most fruitful places during this transition season of my life.

God has lovingly entered me into a time of solitude and silence because He has a lot to say. I have been rendered mute in His presence so that He can do the talking. For this I am grateful.

Pastor Rick has been teaching us that learning to slow down and leaving room for margin creates space for God to work in our daily life. I took some time off from social media and blogging to create space in my own routine for Him to speak to me, and I completely agree with what Rick has said to us:

“We must learn to slow our pace for a healthier life. Learn to be content because human nature is discontent.”

A healthier mind, body and spirit requires Sabbath- rest, silence, solitude, reflection, listening.

But who in this hurried world has time for that? To have free time is to be rendered useless in this performance-driven society.

But our pastor puts it plainly:

“If you are too busy for God, you are too busy.”

Saddleback family, you have encountered me during an interesting season of my life. I have been found by God and unbound from slavery to emotion. I have transitioned from an upheaval of mountainous emotion to a great plane of leveled learning.  I have been forced to slow down and listen to my body, my mind and my soul. I am both victorious and still learning to be so, day in and day out. It’s one piece of human nature at a time, observed, addressed and worked out within me. He is moving in the silences, the margins, and the empty “to-do” lists.

I resist at times because I don’t want to heal, I want to be healed!

But humility is cultivated best in silence and solitude and stillness. Contentment is learned in the quiet place. Healing is found in peaceful acceptance of the right now.

Philippians 4:11 (NLT)

¹¹ I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.

I have not mastered contentment myself, but God is carving out time to work on it within me. He is tunneling out a margin between my desires and my expectations, creating a space to write His own story which is becoming interwoven with mine, a chapter of grace that falls between the definite past and the unknown future.

In prayer this week, here is what I have heard Him say as I have reflected on the sermons and teachings from the past few Sundays on our campus:

“Daughter, rest now. I hear you. I love you. I want to meet with you. Don’t try to control, analyze, explain or grab onto anything. Simply present your needs to me and trust me with them. I am all around you. Trust my work. This type of healing is slow but steady. Trust me with the learning process that you are going through. You are not an exception to My story, you are a main character. Now rest and allow hope and joy to heal you. Surrender your fear, rest in trust, give your anxious thoughts to me. I am all around your mind, body and spirit. I am consuming you with love. But consumed by my love and be made new. Rest while I wash away your sins and make you new. I receive your fear, anxiety and pain as a pleasing sacrifice. I am proud of you. I am holding you. Rest because I love you. You are mind forever.” –Jesus

This is the victory for the past few weeks- I have learned not to make any decisions when I am not in a place of margin. If I don’t have the emotional capacity to slow down into silence and solitude so that I can dwell with God in peace, then I don’t have the right state of mind to make healthy choices. This is not something I have mastered, it is only something I have realized. It’s an area I need to work on. And so I need to take the time to receive His teaching and rest while He is working.

As Pastor Rick continues this sermon series about margin, I will practice conscious gratitude for all the places I find space to rest with Christ:

~I will not be ashamed of taking time for physical self-care: yoga, massage, visits to the chiropractor, taking a nap when I feel tired instead of charging ahead.

~I will embrace opportunities for better emotional health: life-coaching, process groups, inspirational workshops.

~I will make room for God to speak- meditation, sitting in silence, Scripture, journaling.

Pastor Rick made a statement which resonated deep within the confines of my journey:

“I can’t keep charging without recharging. Hurry dries up my love and keeps me from hearing God.”

I have led far too many charges in the past year, and I have pushed away God’s gift of rest.

It’s time to bring awareness to the fear of stillness.

And as I make flawed efforts to get closer to victory, I trust God to help me weave each lesson into my relationships and responsibilities of daily life.

Saddleback family, it is in the margins that we will experience breakthrough. This is about us and God and nothing else.

Do not be ashamed to have time to sit with Him. Some of the most influential teachers I have read are huge proponents of significant amounts of quiet time with God.

Jesus is coming into the deep places of brokenness within us in oder to do a true and lasting healing. He is so proud of us and the hard work we are doing to stop working so hard.

For every small step we take towards Him, He will take a flying leap towards us. He closes the gap when we create a margin.

The empty places in our schedule can become the battleground for the collision of our spirit with His. He is using everything, each piece of our daily lives to draw us closer to Him, especially the vacancies.

Friends, it is in the quite pieces of stillness where humility is cultivated. And humility is the nutrient-rich soil for blessing to be planted and grow up in abundance.

Let us all meet and commune with Him in silence and solitude this week, whatever amount you can give. He receives it all with abundant joy. He knows how much it means to each one of us to carve out time with Him. He knows what it costs to lay down our agendas, and He receives the sacrifice as a good and pleasing aroma.

As we sacrifice our time to Him, he carries our burdens away to make room for something new.

Yes, He honors our time as we honor His.

Do not be afraid of an empty to-do list. It is in this empty space that His Spirit has the freedom to create. We are each a divine vessel of blessed imperfection, and this is best discovered in the margins of our day, the places where our hearts bleed out and our words fall short.

As we create space for margin under the teaching of our pastors, may my entire Saddleback family know the blessed reception of time alone with God.

Though I sit alone with him, I am not lonely because I know that many in my church family sit there also.

And together we can each carry the gift of communion with the Spirit with us into the work of our day and apply it to the broken relationships in which we long to see breakthrough.

I love you, church. Let’s sit quietly together here in this sacred place of solitude with our Savior. Let us surrender our divine imperfections and savor our Savior as He refines us in silence.

Amen and amen.

Rebecca

~*~

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Baptism And Open Doors {Breaking Free}

This time last year I was leaning over a pool publicly baptizing someone in the name of Jesus as that church community looked on with pride and joy. It was my privilege as a community pastor there on Easter day 2017.

One year later I stand humbly beside the pool, one among the crowd, as I watch my son be baptized at a new church by the campus pastor. It was a mixture of many emotions, each of which I surrendered to God so that I could continue to break free from the past.

Life is short and each day belongs to Jesus.

My first Easter weekend at Saddleback was a blessing and I chose to focus on the present abundance rather than old grief over what has been lost. God is doing something new in my life and I want to fully engage and participate in it. I want to be mindful of the present moment rather than dwell on memories which hold me back from breaking free.

If I am not mindful of my emotional health I can easily fall back into old thought patterns, the very ones which sabotaged relationships and destroyed opportunities in my past.

This last Sunday the Easter theme Pastor Rick chose to speak on was Walking Through The Door To Freedom.

“You don’t have to be behind bars to be in prison,” said Pastor Rick.

Sometimes a prison can look like a well-worn thought pattern that can’t be broken without divine intervention.

And so we must come before our King and seek freedom.

Do you ever feel small and unfulfilled? I think this is the constant battle of the human soul, to abide in the uncomfortable places where we realize our deep lack.

To realize that nothing satisfies like Jesus, not food or social media or ministry or books or writing or music or sabotage or anger or regret.

To simply realize that we are terribly thirsty and hungry for Him.

In this way the broken pieces and weak places can become beautiful things as they gently remind us of our humble humanity which is dwelling in full dependence upon a God of loving provision.

He allows us to feel the full weight of our emptiness so that we will walk through the door of His house and come to dine at His table.

“Every experience, even the most unwelcome, if offered to Jesus, can become your gateway to joy.”

–Elisabeth Elliot

As I go into the week after Easter, my agenda is very simple- draw near to the Spirit and receive love. 

This can be done when you are busy or when you are still, whether in emotional turmoil or serenity.

It is especially important to keep the plan simple when you are recovering from a season where many things have fallen apart.

“Sometimes God has to shake your foundation to set you free,” said Rick that day.

So I reflected on Easter Sunday how last year God did this very type of shaking in my life in order to wake me up and set me on a path to freedom.

I resigned from church ministry in September of 2017 and it broke my heart worse than anything I had ever known.

Ever since then I have been afraid to serve on a ministry team again.

“Fear causes you to miss God’s plan for your life.” This was our pastor’s straightforward reminder.

And it’s very true, especially in my case.

God’s plan is to free you so He can bless you.

The freedom for me this past weekend was knowing I could step down and let someone else take my place next to my son in the baptismal and still be totally at peace with all of it.

The blessing this past Easter weekend was that it was also my first time to wear a church-team logo in six months.

I donned the black Saddleback Kids t-shirt, let all my hair down for the first time in just as many months, and I served in the kindergarten classroom just like I did before my last church ministry fell apart.

Sometimes starting all over again is an unexpected joy, and building up from what you have learned is an even greater victory.

I walked through that kindergarten classroom door on Sunday in the same way that many Saddleback members walked through the big blue door set up for rededication to God- with a desire to break free.

Romans 8:1-2

8 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. ² And because you belong to him, the power^[a] of the life-giving Spirit has freed you^[b] from the power of sin that leads to death.

I can break out from the prison of condemnation because even though I still have a great deal left to learn, I am declared free through the death of my old self. I can walk through the door to my true purpose and my eternal calling- to dwell with God as His beloved, and to serve His people from a place of abundant blessing.

I am free to have an entirely new mindset which carries forth from the wreckage of the past and the powerful healing of forgiveness.

“You have no idea what God wants to do in your life unless you let Him free you from the prison of unforgiveness,” Rick reminded us.

I held onto offense at myself and others for many months before I could lay down my pride, face my fear and enter into a church family again.

And out of the hard lesson has come a great blessing- on the same weekend that I joined a ministry team, my son chose to be baptized.

Had I never forgiven, I would have not been given the opportunity to witness this special moment in this special way.

“Why forgive? Because God has forgiven me, resentment makes me miserable, and I am going to need more forgiveness in the future.” When Rick preached this, I nodded in silent assent.

Certainly I will need more forgiveness in the future, first for myself and then probably for others. No church family or ministry team will ever be perfect on this side of eternity, just as I will never be without shortcomings in this lifetime.

But this week God set me free to try again. I stepped through the door to freedom in so many ways this Easter season.

So I will go forward into my new serving responsibilities with perspective, reverence, joy and awareness of my weaknesses. I do not serve as a church member, a team member, a lonely outsider or a wounded soul. Nor do I serve from a place of empty longing.

Rather, I serve as a child of God from an abundance of blessing as a beloved daughter of the King.

I walked through that kindergarten door to break free from the inner voices that say I am unworthy, incapable, insignificant or foolish. No, I will listen to that voice that says I am beloved. I will give myself grace. I will silence shame. I will embrace freedom.

 I will step right over fear and find peace and contentment on the other side, the kind that only Jesus can bring.

“Break out of prison by remembering God loves me and He has a good plan for my life,” said our pastor.

With all the gratitude I have learned so far I will go into this week after Easter as nothing more or less than a beloved child of God. I will do laundry, wash dishes, fold clothes, pick up toys and shop for groceries with a simple awareness that life is short and each day belongs to my holy and good Father who loves me and sets me free and blesses me with His goodness.

I will not be afraid of my lack, but rather I will present it to God and say to Him, “Look, Father, I don’t know what to do with this piece, but it’s uncomfortable and I want it away from me.”

And He will gladly receive my empty soul and fill it with His abundant love.

How? I’m not exactly sure, because if I knew I would be totally fulfilled already. And many days I still feel unsatisfied and longing for more. But I believe that somehow He takes my honesty and turns it into blessing through the careful weaving of His plan with my life.

I know that this past weekend God used my new church family to reveal Gods blessings in the form of new steps towards freedom from my old self.

I found joy in serving on a team again, and I found joy in my son’s baptism. I found joy in my new church family. I found joy in stepping back and allowing another pastor to baptize my son. I found joy in stepping in and serving kindergartners.

It is not the story I would have written, but it is the future I am blessed to have.

“Joy comes from seeing the complete fulfillment of the specific purpose for which I was created and born again, not from successfully doing something of my own choosing.”

–Oswald Chambers

Life is short and each day belongs to Jesus. So I will thank Him for reminding me of my humanity and lovingly responding to my need for grace.

I abide in His provision even when I remain hungry and thirsty for more, and I wait for more understanding to be given in His timing and not mine.

2 Corinthians 3:17

¹⁷ For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

And so this Easter weekend I was free to serve again in ministry and to celebrate with my tribe of Jesus-people as my son was baptized in their midst.

I am free to change, to learn, to surrender, to grow, to belong.

And He leans down and whispers the word “beloved” over me and my entire life story as I continue to walk through the new doors He opens for me.

Thank you, God, for Easter Weekend, baptism and open doors.

Amen.

Rebecca

~*~

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or view my creative writing,

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