Legalism vs Redemption

I was chatting with a friend last week about the conundrum of grace. She vulnerably shared about a situation she was facing, and how sometimes, the deeper challenge is not in apologizing, but in accepting forgiveness. Sometimes, we feel so uncomfortable with the concept of grace, that we would prefer the playing field just be leveled.

I mess up, you mess up, we're even. We move on. 

It may sound twisted, but I understood perfectly. I got how difficult it can feel for our human heart to be handed unwarranted forgiveness, a new slate so to speak. 

I thought about how Jesus' love has taught me to lay down & accept grace when my heart wants to feel justified and "safe." I thought about how this has rolled into my relationship, allowing me to accept forgiveness where I previously would have fought it. 

And then this weekend happened, and I realized that maybe I don't have as big of a grasp on this "free grace" thing as I thought. 

Because the world is ridiculously small, a man that I had crossed paths with 2 and a half years ago on a pre-#adventuresofsoberamy outing somehow collided with one of my good friends. When she asked if I remembered him, I legitimately did not. It took a few Facebook profile pictures to jog my memory, though there wasn't that good of a memory to jog in the first place. 

I felt perfectly safe laughing with my two good friends over this drunken, relatively harmless escapade, but once I realized that this man's image of me did not include the previous 2 years of sobriety, I felt the need to justify myself. The words "tell him I'm 2 years sober and love Jesus now!" flew straight out of my mouth. 

I felt uncomfortably thick in shame that I haven't felt in some time. And in that moment, it seemed like the only way out of that shame was through self-justification. 

I am sober now, therefore my identity is no longer marked by drunken stories. 

I am sober now, therefore my transgressions do not define me. 

I am sober now, therefore I am redeemed. 

And in that moment, I realized that at some point in the last 2 years of sobriety, I got things very, very backwards. 

Sobriety does not redeem my past, 

Jesus redeemed my past. 

All of a sudden, I realized that my salvation and redemption felt safe when seen through the lens of my sobriety. But when that was taken out of the equation, when all that was evident were stories of drunken escapades, I didn't feel redeemed. 

Sobriety was a gift from God, but somewhere along the way, it started taking His place.

God is my redeemer, not sobriety. 

God is the one who frees me from shame, not sobriety. 

Christ is the reason I can stand before God with confidence, not sobriety. 

Sobriety came from the grace of God as a response to the redemption being accomplished in my heart. It was never meant to earn or justify my salvation. 

I used to think legalism was all about putting on a front for others, but now I see that it can easily be used as a front for ourselves. Because accepting free grace? It feels uncomfortable and unnatural. We would much rather feel as though we've safely earned something than freely and undeservingly received it. 

I want to stop trying to earn grace. Because the fact of the matter is, thanks to my homeboy Jesus, it's already mine to receive. 

I want to stop using sobriety as a security blanket to hide from shame. Instead, I want to accept the truth that my identity has been reformed from the inside out simply because I am radically loved by God.

Radically loved, I tell you. 

{PS: you are too}

On Purity

First off, happy Friday!! I figured what better way to kick off Friday than with a super light post on purity. {read: sarcasm}

If you've been around for a while, you may know that this topic is a special one for me. It's the only topic that I've written about for 31 straight days, so there's that. It's one that I love for so many reasons, but for starters, because I can't possibly talk about purity without talking about redemption. 

The fact that I even get to have a voice about this is straight up God's grace at its finest. As a girl who lost her virginity in high school, I never, ever, thought I would get a second chance at innocence. I never imagined that purity is a gift that is given from God, not a title removable by a sexual act. 

I can vividly remember the moment God opened my heart to the idea of sexual purity. I can remember driving home to San Diego, hearing a familiar voice on the radio share a sermon about dating, and boom. It didn't matter that I had already "lost my shot" by the world's standard, I knew that I wanted to save myself for marriage. 

I've learned so much since that moment. God has been faithfully teaching me about purity, and I'm gonna keep it real here, some of it was through my own trial and error. 

Through that trial and error, I saw my own weakness. I saw that if I wanted a God-glorifying relationship, I couldn't do it alone. I needed a man equally committed to protecting the purity within our relationship, and praise Lord Jesus Himself, He gave me just that. 

I want to share the things that I'm learning here. I want to share to tell a story of God's redemption, to testify of the fact that He truly does make all things new. He forgives, and He restores, and He gives new life. 

I want to share to testify of His faithfulness, to reveal that He truly is strong in our weakness. Purity can never come from self-effort, it is always a result of the Spirit. And I, for one, want to see more of the Spirit in my life. I want to see and experience sexual purity that comes from a heart changed by God. That type of purity exists in singleness, and it exists in dating, and it exists in marriage. It's not meant for one season of life, it's meant for all of life. Period. 

I wrote about it in singleness, and now, I have the privilege of writing about it in dating. I have the privilege of sharing my struggles, and my lessons, and my victories. 

I share for one reason: to give Him glory. I share because it is only because of Him that I have this story to tell. And I share because He has given me a man who truly loves my passion to share it all to praise His name. I love him for that. 

Purity has nothing to do with physical actions, and everything to do with the heart. It's not something we do, or we find, or we achieve. It's something we experience through the power of the Holy Spirit within us. It's something we find through surrendering our whole heart to our mighty God. 

Purity is two fold, the desire and the power to do what pleases God. If we have the desire, and not the power, then we constantly find ourselves falling into sin. We want to live a life of purity, but without the power to do so, we're stuck in our fleshly habits. 

If we have the power without the desire, it does no good. What good is having the physical fitness required to run a marathon if I don't have the desire to run a marathon? 

It takes both; we must find both the desire and the power to do what pleases God. And those, my friends, are gifts from Jesus. Those we find when we accept the gift of relationship with God that was given to us when a Man hung on a cross for us. It wasn't earned, or deserved. It was given, and when we receive it, we feel the life-changing surge of the Holy Spirit, which gives us the desire and the power to do things we never imagined possible. 

When Life Happens

I've been neglecting this space lately. Honestly, I feel like I've been neglecting it for the majority of 2014. I kicked off the year going to Africa, came back, and something shifted. At first, I thought it was just the Africa thing. I thought I was avoiding coming to jot down my thoughts, because I couldn't figure out what my thoughts were. I couldn't possibly get out the words to capture what happened in my heart over there, so I kind of just didn't. 

I tried writing about other things, and yet I still found myself not writing. I still found myself consistently choosing other things over blogging, whether it was time with friends, or time alone with God, or time with sleep. 

2014 marked a shift. A shift that left me with more living, and less writing. And at a certain point, I became okay with that. I knew writing was a big passion of mine, but I knew following Jesus where ever He took me was an even bigger one. I knew that if He was calling me to invest in my real world community instead of my online one, I had to be okay with that. 

I think it helped that part of me knew I wasn't done with writing. 

Part of me knew that He wasn't done with my writing. 

It was just a shift, and I gave into it, trusting Him fully. 

While there are many things that I miss about regular blogging, one of the biggest is the documenting. I love looking back over the years, and walking through the memories. Some things that deserved to be documented, and plenty that probably didn't, but I love that it all was. 

Some things just hands down deserve to be documented, and this weekend, one of those things happened.  

I don't even care that I look ghostly in these pictures, they bless me more than I could even express. This weekend, I had a brand spankin' new view at church. I stood behind the pulpit for the first time, instead of sitting in front of it. I had a mic strapped on for the first time, spoke for multiple services for the first time, and busted out all my best hand gestures (those are a fairly regular occurance). 

This weekend, I got to preach the gospel. I got to share the story of how Jesus has transformed my life, and was privileged and blessed to encourage others in their journey with Him. 

There are no words for what happened in my heart on that stage. All I know is it's what this heart was made to feel. 

I've been speaking at a Wednesday night gathering I'm a part of, and the passion I feel for teaching about the Lord is unreal. There is so much to the story of how that even started, how I even got to be in this body of believers, and on that pulpit in the first place. Maybe one day, I'll share the whole story here. It's a likely possibility. 

But for now, here's what I have to say. Our God makes dreams come true. Our God creates each person so uniquely, and places specific desires in their heart. He delights in fulfilling those God-given desires.

Growing up, I had a passion for speaking. In my high school youth group, I asked if I could speak one Sunday and share my testimony. It never happened, and I was disappointed at the time. I can look back now and realize that it was most likely because my testimony hadn't even begun yet. 

Somewhere along the line, the teenage insecurity kicked in and pushed out that passion for speaking. You put me in front of a classroom in high school or college, and my knees would start shaking like no other. Being in the limelight had no appeal when the voice quivers came in full force. 

With Jesus in the picture, that passion slowly started coming back. I'm not sure when it even did, but somehow, I was speaking and teaching and loving every minute of it. Somehow, the desire to share my testimony publicly resurfaced, and lo' and behold, our pastor asked me to do just that. 

Sunday was a day I will forever remember. It's a day that I hold onto as the beginning of something big, dreaming with expectant faith that my God has a plan here. 

Because my God makes dreams come true. 

Dream big, my friends.