Transformed and Re:train(ing)

Jesus Loves Me.  This I know.  Easy right?  Not so much.  It's easy to sing, but hard to know.

The first week at Re:Train was so mind-blowing and soul-bending I cannot even begin to strum the words quickly enough and allow for the time I need to write my first paper in response to drinking from five fire hoses at the the same time.

But I can show you how my week was framed, and I encourage you -- Believer or Not -- to listen.  The subtlety of this framework is the most beautiful experience, despite some convicting moments and exposed fear, but most of all,the need for complete total dependence on God was made perfectly clear.

Before I left for Retrain, Jarrett text me Saturday morning, asking to share my testimony at the Saturday evening service at Prestonwood.  He knows I firmly believe that it is God's story, I just lived it and it's here to share.  Go ahead.  "Share away!" is what I say, what's more, it's what even he tells me to keep doing.

Something told me to go to Prestonwood that evening.  I never do that.  I have to work.  What an incredible message to hear about fear and the power of a transformed life.  The message was powerful not because I got to hear this man who prayed for my salvation for almost a decade talk about me by name, but rather these paraphrased moments...

"We don't want Jesus in our business because we're comfortable. We're respectable sinners.  Respectable sinners are different from other people.  Jesus provokes change.  Most people dont want change, but more importantly, dont want TO change."

In the twenty to thirty minute range is when Jarrett starts preaching and talks about my conversion.  I have never heard him do this, particularly infront of the masses (with the expection of my baptism, sermon in which he also goes after the very thing in two simple words that still makes me cringe -- spiritual warfare).  It was so encouraging for me, especially being able to hear it while in Seattle, on  a Thursday morning walk to class at Mars Hill.

Transformed from prestonwoodsn on Vimeo.


 The Lord was working on me during that walk, revealing my need for him, for his truth, because all I began to hear was doubt.  All week we were looking at our identity, and all week I was seeing how mine is/was not crafted in Christ as much as I thought it was.  It still makes me shudder that I am so succesptable to believe lies, to think I dont have worth, that I'm a fraud, that I have no place to be an encouragement to others, that my desire to encourage is selfish in some twisted way... but even these things reveal my need for Jesus, because it painfully reveals my pride.

Being at Mars Hill blew my mind in so many ways.  I cannot go into it all here, but just today, I was reading Rid of My Disgrace, a book everyone should read, because statistically everyone knows someone who has been a victim of sexual assault, or is one themselves.  I've been trying to read this book for months, and I just love how gracious my God is in that his timing is always perfect and my pace for this book is set.  This paragraph describes my week at Re:Train, in everything I learned for myself and for class:

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You are accepted.  Isn't that what you long to hear, especially when you know you don't deserve it and can't earn God's acceptance? Undeserved acceptance is a great way of explaining grace.  It somehow changes guilt into assurance.  Grace comes to you when you are weak, not strong.  It's yours when you are in pain and restlessness.  Grace floods you when you feel that your separation is deeper than usual.  It runs to you when your disgust for your weakness and your lack of composure has become intolerable to you.  Grace is already there when the longed-for progress does not appear, when the old compulsions reemerge, when despair destroys joy and courage.  Grace is the wave of light that breaks into darkness, and you hear God say: "Because of what my Son did, you are accepted.  Once you had not received mercy, but now you receive mercy.  You belong to me.  Do not try to do anything right now.  DO not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything.  Simply accept the fact you are accepted."

I just read that today.  Funny how those words were written by the very man who taught us on Friday, the very day a scalpel was taken to me to reveal a wound I still do not yet fully see.  The one thing I did see that day?  Grace.  It was, in a moment, so plain, in the form of a blonde executive assistant who sat with me, spoke truth into me, loved on me and prayed me for simply being a daughter of a king...it almost couldn't be true. I saw community just work itself out there, in that room, in that building, in the condo in which I was hosted.  I saw hospitality at its finest in a humble home from a complete and total stranger who had, for the past month, along with her community group, been praying for me.  As a matter of fact, Justin Holcomb was teaching about grace in the main room while I sat talking with this blonde headed woman speaking to me in a way I'd never in my life even known possible for someone like me.  Instead of hearing it, I experienced it, in the most profound and personal way.  Why?  Because Jesus loves me....this I know... for the Bible tells me so...

Singing and reading it is one thing, to know and feel it, is quite another.

Before I mentioned my week was delicately framed.  Dear Reader, I pray as you read on, you will allow what was laid out above to permeate your heart to see what I am attempting to explain.

For you and me, our identity is rooted in someone or something. If our identity is sourced in anyone or anything other than the love of Jesus, it puts us in a really dangerous place for our well being. If we don’t believe that we’re loved, we’ll end up using people, manipulating them, getting into unhealthy relationships. Counselors will call it co-dependency where we have a love addiction and we just need someone to love us.

Or if we believe that we’re unloved or unlovable, we become depressed. We become sad. We become, perhaps, even suicidal. “Why is my life worth living if no one cares for me?” When we understand that Jesus loves us, it transforms our identity and it reshapes our destiny. It changes everything. That’s exactly what it did for John, the one whom Jesus loved.

That an excerpt from the sermon I heard at Mars Hill the Sunday I left.  Here's a preview.

Did you see that sentence?

For some reason the whole sermon wont embed, but please view this message here...Atheist, Agnostic, or Believer, because he mentions and includes us all, and it is good.

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When we understand that Jesus loves us, it transforms our identity, and it reshapes our destiny.  Mark Driscoll

THAT sums up my first week at Re:train.

•  Jarrett's sermon Transformed is about the power of a transformed life, in which he mentions me by name, and boldly calls out  all "Respectable Sinners"
•  Identity:  All week we learned from Bill Clem, author of  Disciple:  Getting Your Identity from Jesus.
• Mark Driscoll's sermon Jesus Loves Us describes me, down to the codependancy and suicidal past, and ultimately exposes the "respectable Sinners" or consumers, in his own to the core, Mark Driscoll way.  Practical.  Hard, yet loving truth.
• The thread in all of this is LOVE
• I'm learning love.  I'm learning to trust in Christ.  I'm learning to listen.  To not be a "respectful sinner." To be the woman who knows I am loved, no matter what I learn about me, or how many times I fail or feel like a complete fool.

There is one figure I have identified with this entire year:  Ruth.  Ruth is my favorite character in my favorite movie, Fried Green Tomatoes.

My Sweet and Precious Grandmother Taylor's middle name was Ruth.  She lived on a lake.  I remember ducks in November.  It was also through Rhonda Ruth's  story and her death, the Lord began to pursue me earnestly.

 Ultimately, yes, these were strong women, because in their lives they displayed Christ's love for everyone. They were disciples. Even their deaths, in the vulnerability of loss, those they left behind found hope where only hope can be found.

Redeeming Ruth is the first sermon series I studied at Mars Hill, and the sermon God's Hand in Our Risks was the first sermon I listened to in that series where Driscoll says, and I remember when I heard it the first time, clear as day...

 Ruth has a genuine conversion experience along the way to Bethlehem and says, “No, I want to worship God and I want to be with his people, so I need to get to Bethlehem.” This would be akin to a young woman meeting Jesus and saying, “I wanna go to Seattle because I want to be a member of Mars Hill. 

In that snippet of the story are the words we all know, and even my sister, because of our favorite movie, used in her wedding, "Whether thou goest, I will go, whether thou lodgest I will lodge.  Thy people shall be my people."

To do this took guts, especially as women.  Women even in the first century were considered one step above cattle, not allowed to speak in a court of law, and without a man -a  husband or a son - you were essentially left to die.  Today, I know many women (I was one myself) that would feel like they'd die if they didnt have someone, a guy, to "love," that has "potential," that they could somehow "rescue," and "complete" them. That's codependency. When I finally let one go, my world fell apart.  All his stuff was gone, and I stared at my empty bedroom and felt all alone, despite the fact I have a little girl that was given to me by God, to love and to shepherd, just scares me stupid because I don't remember being a child.  I knew at that moment just how fragile the identity I had spent so many years crafting actually was.

I felt empty.

That's a pretty vulnerable place to be.  That vulnerability is important.  When I read that excerpt from Holcomb's book today, and read "Grace comes to you when you are weak, not strong," I felt that vulnerability.  When I listened again to Jarrett's sermon and I heard, " We don't want Jesus in our life because we want to be comfortable.  We're respectable sinners... We don't listen when we hear him say, 'Quit that job and move where I tell you to go...'  In the beginning when he mentions the two radical conversion he's seen, first my story, then John's and how he and John have every Monday for the past two years gone through the bible, and are currently doing - you guessed it - Ruth. When I heard Driscoll's sermon... this sermon, for the first time ever on campus, not online in a different state, all I could do was weep, coupled with the fact that Mark Driscoll tweeted he was actually in Dallas that very weekend, and I assume hanging out with his friend and my pastor, Matt Chandler.  This solidified to me this move is right, because I am following the message and not the man.

And I remember the one thing Jarrett has reminded me of consistently throughout this year while I have gone through the absolute and utter destruction of my previous life without Christ --

He honors obedience above all else.

And the Reconstruction is on the horizon.

Oh how great is our God to speak to us so sweetly.

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Thank you for reading, for your participation, and your prayer.

Folks, if you feel like helping me through Re:train so I can continue to learn, to grow, to ultimately give back and bless others, please give.  Please pray against fear, fear of change, fear of risk in learning to trust as I listen to the Lord's lead, that he will lift my clenched fingers that hold tightly to the guard rail, one by one, as he makes a way to move to Seattle.

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