Contemplative Prayer {Let Sleeping Dogs Lie}

When your guard dog stops barking, that's the time to have a real conversation with God. So always let sleeping dogs lie when you come to the place of contemplative prayer. For as the mysterious Rescuer becomes the intimate Beloved, we must shift our mindset and change the way we talk to Him.

In the aftermath of the storm, when we are still unsorted but no longer emotionally driven, this is where He does His transformation work. Moving from spiritual infancy to relational intimacy with our God is a challenge that includes the vulnerability of communicating with Him.

I wonder as I sit here today- is my faith based upon the adrenaline of emotionally fueled need? Or can I converse with my Savior when I am in His gentle abiding presence, even when I am not carried along by the powerful rescuing of His power? 

When I look back and see the places where there were two sets of footprints in the sand instead of His one, were we walking together in silence or was I sharing aloud my thoughts with Him?

When the emotion dies down and the dust settles, this is where we begin the discipline of figuring out how to talk to God on a daily basis. Like a marriage that moves beyond the honeymoon stage of emotional ups and downs, we can no longer base our faith on our response to the pendulum swing of feeling and response. 

Now that I am safely on dry ground, what can I say once the gratitude comes to an end and the adrenaline of decision runs out?

My transparent confession here is that I don’t know how to talk to God on a normal day- it feels stoic and detached if my prayer is not compelled by tears. And there is nothing lifegiving about an outlook on faith that requires pain to remain motivated.

This past week I have been anxious about my prayer life, so it was time to stop and settle myself into a sermon about surrender, yokes and sustainable faith. And so here today I will attempt to connect my stunted prayer life to the sermon at my home church, a weekend workshop I attended on fear, and silly pictures of my sleeping dog…

I sat down in my study for the first time since we completed it over the weekend, the space my husband created for my love of writing and hope for learning. God willing I will be going to school part-time in the Fall, but either way this is a new and sacred space for my creative and productive writing endeavors. So I paused here in this room to listen to the sermon from Sunday. 

It was a talk from Pastor Rick about keeping your tank full when you are tempted to try running on empty. After a nine-part series on living with margin, my church family wraps up this practical application series with a theme which turned out to be demonstrated right in front of me as I sat there listening-

My dog was asleep on her bed, back on the floor and legs in the air, eyes shut and tongue hanging out. It was clearly well with her soul. 

This is why yoga poses get named after dogs, because they know something we humans don’t- God created us to rest and refuel. This means laying flat on our backs with no agenda and no worries (even if we are normally itchy and high-octane, hell-bound on catching squirrels, retrieving balls and barking viciously at coyotes), relaxing even our tongue so that we do not speak but receive life-giving communion in the silence of our soul.

She was allowing her brain to enter into a state of complete vulnerable relaxation, because even the animals know that silence and solitude is required for healthy survival.

This high-powered, ball-fetching, saber-toothed machine was in a posture of refueling that expressed wisdom which far surpassed my straight back and crossed legs as I sat consuming Christianity in my rocking chair. And Pastor Rick talked for nearly 90 minutes about coming to Jesus for an easy yoke and a releasing of burdens.

But how do you find this kind of rest when

you don’t know how to talk to God

on the other side of a storm?

Last Saturday I went to a workshop at The Freedom Center called Fearless, and in the course of six hours I was invited to explore the deeper pieces of my relationship to Jesus. Especially significant to me was being reminded of a tool I already have in my belt which I rarely ever use- the beautiful practice of Lectio Divina. 

Lectio Divina is a divine reading of Scripture followed by a quiet contemplation of the words; you simply sit with the reading and absorb it into your mind. In practice over time, you begin finding a physical place in the Scripture where you belong, especially if it’s a story passage. The reader literally dwells in the reading, abiding in the meaning and allowing herself to feel whatever is the natural response to this invitation to join Jesus on the page.

I could see the disparity between my inability to pray out loud and my desire to meet Him only in the storm. When the emotional chaos is over, He invites me into the aftermath, which is the most intimate meeting of all, because in that quiet place of post-destruction is where we can speak with Him most calmly and receive His gentle sorting through the damage that was done.

Without the pressure of desperate need and imperative rescue, what do our words sound like when we speak to Him- or do we speak at all? If our conversations with Jesus only happen during storms, very little is actually said and we never develop a conversational relationship, but rather depend on emotion to drive our communication with God. But this is not sustainable. Thus, seeking relationship with Jesus in the gentle margins of drama is a significant part of spiritual formation.

During the workshop we specifically practiced Lectio Divina from the story of when Jesus calms the storm.

It reads like this:

Mark 4:35-41 (NLT)

³⁵ As evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” ³⁶ So they took Jesus in the boat and started out, leaving the crowds behind (although other boats followed). ³⁷ But soon a fierce storm came up. High waves were breaking into the boat, and it began to fill with water.

³⁸ Jesus was sleeping at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. The disciples woke him up, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you care that we’re going to drown?”

³⁹ When Jesus woke up, he rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Silence! Be still!” Suddenly the wind stopped, and there was a great calm. ⁴⁰ Then he asked them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

⁴¹ The disciples were absolutely terrified. “Who is this man?” they asked each other. “Even the wind and waves obey him!”

After the reading we spent several minutes in silence allowing ourselves to connect with the text and find ourselves in it.

I found myself writing these words in my quiet reflection on the passage-

I am a bird above the storm. I cannot see what is happening, I don’t know who is involved. But I know I am afraid and there is danger.

The clouds begin to break apart very suddenly, and there is an invitation- keep flying onward or dive down and see what God has been doing here.

Ignore the damage and miss the healing, or stop and enter the aftermath in order to see Jesus face to face?

The storm has passed and the invitation is to come and see what God is doing there now…

What is God doing here with me now that the storm is over? What is He sorting through?

All week I have abstained from prayer because I don’t know what to say. I think my relationship to Him has been based on the emotional turmoil of the past few years- so what now?? I have come through a storm, but I am still myself, and God is still God, and how do I spend an entire lifetime as His beloved when I don't know how to talk to Him on a normal day?

So as I sat and listened to Pastor Rick discuss resting in Jesus, I found myself feeling ashamed and anxious- am I doing this spiritual growth thing right? Am I getting it down? Why don’t I have an abundance of peace? Is my margin big enough for deep healing to happen? Is my faith really so shallow???

All the while my dog snores at my feet, and God knocks at my heart and the light of peace rages outside my window.

“Daughter,” He says, “I am not in a hurry. I want to be in your story with you as Your source of deep soul-rest and contentment. Stop asking these questions of yourself and start asking them of Me. Don’t doubt yourself, doubt Me and then watch how I will exceed your expectations every time. Surrender the unsorted fallout, now that the storm is over, and abide with Me in the messy aftermath as we float together here on a clam sea of deep waters.”

Says my pastor as I rock and listen and worry, “It is miserable to sit in God’s waiting room when we are in a hurry and He is not.”

Jesus, I have a lovely room to wait in, but my mind is somewhere else today, chasing after every worry and fear that passes through my thoughts. I don't know how to relate to You outside of a storm.

So I look for storms for my faith to ride on. Like the worry that I won’t finish grad school when I haven't even started or been accepted yet. Irrational? But God! I am a full-time mommy of two- and today I have a sick boy home from school, and the fear rises up which says I cannot miss class and take care of my sick child at the same time, so what am I going to do, God?

Anxiety says quit while you are ahead, because it might be hard. Assume there is a storm even when there is not one, because who knows when another one will set in. Live each day like there is a storm, even when there is not. Search for storms and pray about them like crazy, never letting an opportunity pass you by to grab worry by the horns and ride it into the sunset.

And then how is God supposed to speak to us over the screaming chaos of our fears? If He is always rescuing us, how can He ever meet with us in the calm places of our mind?

So God leans in closer and says, “Meet Me in the margin and let sleeping dogs lie.”

And that margin is a discipline, one which requires contemplative prayer.

Friends, God has called me to prayer this week. No, not the prayer I say in the presence of others, but the prayer I speak aloud into the silence when I am alone with Him.

This is hard. It feels vulnerable to come to God without desperate need, but simply to approach Him for the sake of intimate conversation. To say to Him, "can we talk about what happened, now that it's over and I can think more clearly?"

When my guard dog stops barking, that's the time to have a real conversation with God.

To communicate with the Spirit effectively, we must allow Him to calm the storm of our emotions and bring quiet to the chaotic places in our mind. Then we must be willing to meet with Him in the aftermath, amidst the silent disorder and quiet confusion, and begin to sort things out. Piece by piece, thought by thought, broken relationships and old wounds attended to in the quiet of our conversation which is slightly muffled by the vast silence all around us.

To be alone with God after the storm is to be absolutely and terrifyingly vulnerable. To speak in this space is even more so. To let sleeping dogs lie means to enter into a sacred space where the only agenda is relational intimacy.

Contemplative prayer happens in the margin of our emotions, in the space between input and reaction, observation and conclusion, realization and response. If we can widen the margin between the calming of the storm and the rapid moving onwards towards the next storm, in that sacred space we can find healing for our soul through a closeness of our Savior.

I learned an awakening fact at the Fearless workshop- Prayer is centered in the part of the brain that processes and understands what has happened post-reaction. So contemplative prayer is actually centered in the calm which comes after the storm.

Now I am no neuroscientist, so don’t correct my lack of knowledge on the subject of brain science. Just give me grace for the path of learning I am taking at my own slow pace. I’m doing the best I know how with the little information I have thus far. But according to what I heard, contemplative prayer happens in the rational part of our brain called the neocortex.

Here is what struck me when I learned this about prayer- I have a hard time praying because I feel like I should have a wave of emotion behind my words when I pray out loud. Otherwise I feel like they are not authentic.

Basically, I am only good at praying when I am in a storm- afterwards, I don't know what to say.

Whenever I pray in public, or even in quiet, I become calm and almost “emotionless” as my mind centers on the words and my awareness movse away from how I was feeling before I started the prayer. I disassociate from my emotions when I pray out loud. I thought this was a problem.

But wouldn’t this be a good thing for someone who struggles with anxiety? Yes. Because it means I can move out from under anxiety when I pray, because prayer brings my awareness to a part of my brain which is rational and good at reasoning and regulating emotion. And it explains a lot about how prayer practiced as a discipline over time literally heals the brain from unwanted emotion.

But somehow I have always considered myself a “bad” pray-er because I never feel "emotional" when I speak plain and simple words to God out loud- unless I am in a storm. When my prayers are desperate and broken and full of tear-filled repentant need for rescue, then I have strong communication with God. But one cannot live an entire prayer life dependent upon storms, because who can live in continual fear?

So I almost always write my prayers, because then they flow with emotion and feel genuine and also safe, since writing happens in a different place within the brain than speaking. Writing my prayers is great, and I have written countless prayers and treasure them and will pass them onto my children someday. But despite my written affluence, I still stumble to speak to God out loud. 

Yet I hear a call to create intimacy with Christ by meeting with Him in the margin and speaking with Him in the places that need freedom from fear. There is hope to know that peaceful prayer is actually supposed to be free from raging emotion, because God located it in a different place in our brain. It has a sacred space all it's own, and for good reason- it keeps is safe from the storm and accessible outside of emotional turbulence. Good news for me, but still hard to realize.

Unlike when I write to Him, when I actually talk to God I feel very small and insufficient and rather deflated. When I get quiet before God I can hear His invitation in the aftermath of emotional chaos, but I don't know how to reply. So often I am intimidated by the invitation to meet with Him in the calm, because I am so accustomed to meeting Him only in the chaos. But in the discipline of contemplative prayer, if I wait with humility and patience and trust His gentle presence, He will point out a quiet place where our conversation can begin.

As He meets me in my insecurities, He gently invites me to speak with Him in the places that accommodate intimate conversation.

It is this separation of emotion and prayer that feels foreign and confusing, vulnerable and intimate. Why am I here, if not to ask for something I need? To approach our God for the sake of being with Him, to come to Him unsorted and exposed and uncertain, this is what it means to let sleeping dogs lie. Don't upset the restful state of mind, but abide in it and receive much needed healing in calmer waters.

Just as contemplative prayer happens in the neocortex of the brain, I also learned that emotion is located in the limbic system, a separate part of the brain. This is where we feel- the place where the storm hits and the reaction happens. This is where we act without thinking and evaluate later. This is where regrets happen, and words we cannot take back. This is where shame takes root.

Thankfully for anxiety-prone people such as myself, the place inside our brain where we practice contemplative prayer is not the same place as where we experience violent emotional storms.

So there is a difference between braving the storm and speaking with the Savior. There must be an experience of both extremes- extreme emotion and extreme tranquility. To have a quiet mind allows God to meet us on a deeper level. Big emotions can pave the way for communion with God because they indicate the areas that need healing and create opportunity for invitation, but intimate conversation with God happens after the storm has passed. 

Braving the waves may initiate the start of a relationship with Him, but they cannot define it. We must meet with Jesus in the quite places of our mind where we can process His love for us and the reason for His rescue. When the dog is sleeping, let it be, because as sure as the dawn it will rise up and demand attention soon enough. When prayer is not fueled by emotion, pray anyways- even if it feels empty, as I know it does sometimes. 

In the letdown after a storm, contemplative prayer is an access to His presence that is only possible in the quiet state of still waters.

Prayer heals the brain because speaking to God requires mental processing, rational thought and awareness of the present moment. So in order to get from emotional response down into contemplative prayer, we must invite Jesus to discuss the storm with us after it is all over, so that we can come down from our fearful flight high in the sky and see what He is doing at ground level within us.

I liken the storm to the amygdala, that part of our limbic system which is in fight or flight mode.

My daughter calls the amygdala the "guard dog", one which is always on the lookout for danger. It worries, stresses, panics, doubts, and has not concept of time. It is a place of emotional turmoil- we need help to regulate and calm this internal chaos. Jesus, in my imaginative illustration here, is the hippocampus. This is a place in our brain which requires language in order to heal and grow. My daughter calls this the "wise owl" of her thoughts. It moderates the storm through analytical reasoning, builds context for situations and pulls things into perspective. It keeps the guard dog calm under stress.

If we put language to what we are feeling, if we pray aloud in the silence of the aftermath, we allow Jesus to enter in and move into the neocortex, that place in our brain where we can begin to pray and process and begin to develop sustainable, intimate relationship with Him.

This is good news for anxious, prayer-stunted, shell-shocked followers of Jesus such as myself.

I want to become brave enough to dive into the aftermath and talk rationally with Him about what has happened and what He is doing to sort it all out now.

Friends, the hope I have today is that I can assist in my own healing process by learning to how to pray. I activate my neocortex when I speak with Jesus, and I can process my anxiety in a healthy way through even the most timid conversation with Him. Now that I know this, I can consciously invite Jesus to meet with me in the stillness of my rational brain, separate from my emotion, so that we can converse together in peace. For an anxious worrier like myself, this is a great comfort. 

I look forward to practicing this more in the days to come as I anticipate going back to school.

I want to begin enter into awe and wonder when I approach conversation with God, as I desire to move down into the stillness of the aftermath. When I am anxious, I will remember the tool of contemplative prayer- it does not take away the cause of my anxiety, but it frees me up to converse with my Teacher about whatever is going on. It helps me find a sacred space to do healing work by His side. This is Jesus doing a transforming work within me, inviting His child to see not only the unsorted damage but to witness the miracle of soul repair that He is quietly carrying out.

We actively assist in our own healing when we practice contemplative prayer, and this happens through words that are humble, gentle and honest. This, my friends, is why He tells us that His burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30 (NLT)

²⁸ Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

When Pastor Rick talks to us about soul-deep rest, he is talking about the promise that if we meet with Jesus in the margin through disciplines such as Lecto Divina and contemplative prayer, our brain will literally arrive in a place where we can communicate clearly with our God and receive the comfort and peace that we crave.

No, the problems are not solved, the worries are not erased. But they are given proper perspective, a place of submission beneath the gracious will of God. And He can begin to sort through the wreckage alongside us, and we will be in awe that He is so good to love us even when we feel so unsorted.

This is how you find rest 

and intimacy with God

on the other side of a storm.

Father, forgive me for neglecting to meet and talk with You on so many occasions. I have preferred to fly over the storm and ignore it, rather than waiting for You to part the clouds and inviting me to survey the damage with You so that we can begin the repair together. Please help me find the language I need to speak words of surrender to You so that I can experience the lightness of Your yoke upon my shoulders, and the freedom to slow my pace and arrive alongside You instead of moving on, away from healing and towards another storm. For myself and all those who are reading this today, I ask for You to quiet the chaos of our ego-mind so that we can experience the deep healing of trusting You with our emotional weariness. God, invite us again to survey the damage and meet with You in the place in our brain where we process information and contemplate Your words. May I learn to trust You both in the speaking and in the silence, both in the storm and in the peace, and please bless my feeble attempts to talk to You when the storm is over and I don’t know what to say.

Thank you for loving me even when I feel so unsorted.

In Jesus name, Amen.

As we go into this week, dear friends, may we remember that in order to exchange our emotional burden for the mental processing of peace, we must meet with Him in the calm which comes after the storm. Here the emotion dies down and the dust settles, because it is after the storm is over that He does His most intimate work within us, sorting gently and quietly through the wreckage as we talk about each piece with Him. And as the mysterious Rescuer becomes the intimate Beloved, we can shift our mindset and change the way we talk to Him. 

Thank you so much for contemplating this in prayer with me today- I very much appreciate my tiny tribe of readers.

When your guard dog stops barking, that's the time to have that intimate conversation with Jesus for which He patiently awaits. So let sleeping dogs lie, and may all canines be peaceful and happy as we contemplate Gods' Word in the quiet aftermath of the storm :)

With Gratitude,

Rebecca

~*~

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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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