Broken Made Beautiful

I'll probably never forget the day last October when I found myself curled up on the floor in my room, broken, and in tears. On that day I surrendered the broken pieces of my life back into God's hands.

I struggled with an eating disorder for about a year. In September, I started eating again, but I hated every minute of it. I hated the fact that I was forcing myself to eat, rather than eating willingly. And I hated the fact that I had to eat, even though I had no desire to. I was ashamed, afraid, and dealing with self-hate. I had struggled for control, only to realize that I had none. That I was completely out of control. I realized that I was broken, but I was still unwilling to surrender to God's control. I had compartmentalized my life. God could have everything but that. I tried to piece myself back together.

And it didn't work. It was like trying to tape together broken china.

I was reminded today of the fact that we serve a God who makes broken things beautiful by the healing power of His grace. I also found a Japanese art form that I have thoroughly fallen in love with. It’s called kintsugi.

Veins of gold lacquer delicately hold together a once broken piece of china.

On that day in October, I surrendered to God. I realized that I couldn't fix myself, so I asked Him to do it for me. I'm not saying that everything has been perfect since then. It hasn't. There are days when I still have to make a conscious effort to eat enough. Perhaps the biggest struggle for me was to choose joy, instead of being weighed down by the guilt, shame, and regret that I felt.

For a long time, all I saw were the cracks - the marks of my failure. When I finally saw beyond that, and in those cracks saw God's golden grace, that I was able to rejoice. I'm not happy with my choices and the consequences they had, but I am joyful that God's grace is enough to heal and hold together a life that was once broken.

For a long time I struggled to be honest about the fact that I had been anorexic. I still don't talk about it a lot, but I've gotten to the point that I'm not unwilling to talk about it. I realized that I needed to be willing to acknowledge my struggles to others, in order to share with people the incredible work of God's grace in my life. It's like a kintsugi plate: if you pretend that it was never cracked, then you can't enjoy the beauty of how it is now held together. It's like Paul, choosing to boast in his weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ could be seen in him.

Most people throw away their broken china. A lot of people are willing to throw away their broken lives. But that isn’t how God works. God’s grace is beautiful. More and more I see the incredible grace of God running in gold en veins through my life, holding me together. Like kintsugi, where the lines where the piece of china was once broken add beauty as they are filled with gold, our lives become beautiful as they are put back together by God.

Written by Patience Griswold

Discipleship - The Leader

(Click here for enlarged video... you'll want to see this one full-size!!!)

HE IS

Pastor Eric Ludy and the Church at Ellerslie

Have you caught the vision of world-altering Christianity?

Are you willing to follow it, no matter the cost?

Are you willing to give up all that you are

for all that He is?

.....How could we not?

Discipleship - The Cost

It Will Cost You Everything

Pastor Steve Lawson

Have you given up everything?

Is there something that God is not "allowed" to touch

in your life?

What is keeping you from spreading the Good News?

Are you willing to give all that you are for all that 

He is?

[to be continued next week]

Flesh

Flesh... the old man... sin... Who is this?

Spirit... the new man... righteousness... Who is this?

What are we?

I have always had this assumption that I am evil. After all, I inherited sin, right? Am I not born condemned? Am I not a vile creature in the presents of a great God?

Let me tell you something:                     YOU are NOT your FLESH. YOU are not the old man, YOU are not sin. YOU are the IMAGE, the PICTURE, and the REPRESENTATION, of GOD.

Fear of evil and change is something that many of us have. We are afraid to change ourselves. We think that sin is part of us, and subconsciously we imagine ourselves like an amputee with out it. In reality though, this idea that we are made of our sin is from the enemy.

First, let’s establish who we actually are, and I am a debater... and its time for Cross examination.

• Do you agree that you are made in God's image?
• Is God in any way blemished?
• Is he the perfect creator?
• Does He have every skill, or is he imperfect, and did he mess up on you?
• Would He create you in a way that did not accurately represent a part of Him?
• Thank you... No further questions at this time.

You see, God made you in His image, and in His likeness. You are a perfect creation. We are made in the image of a perfect God, so how are we sinners? That is just it we are sinners not actual sin.

At creation we were made like an easel, a frame to display a picture. As humans, were created to where garments, clothing. At creation God filled us, or clothed us in his perfect righteousness, yet in the fall we rejected that. We forsook our perfect garments and traded them for imperfect sin. After the fall man realized that he was naked; he was suddenly aware that without the perfect raiment of God he must be clothed with other garments.

Man was meant to wear things, to be clothed. We were many different things, but our clothes are not us. Unfortunately though, it is by what we clothe ourselves with, that we often measure our worth. We often measure by the garments worn… and I say that in both a physical sense and a spiritual sense.

God, on the other hand, sees us for who we are to become, the person we were meant to be. We are each unique frames, each of us is a unique person. We are each meant to display a peace of art, whose art we display is how we will be seen judged. We are that frame, but differing from the one hanging on my wall now, we were given something very great. We were given free will. This is perhaps the only thing given us. FREE WILL: The ability to act as wished and to reap the consequences. Using this “free will” we often let the enemy start to draw on our canvas.

When we are stained by the enemy’s pencils we look at ourselves in horror and grief. That is when God comes in to the picture. We are the frame and the canvas, the enemy has only pencils, but God has the great eraser and paints. God has the power to remove those blemishes into little bits of eraser crumple on the floor, and create a master piece of his own.

This is very easy to write and read about, isn’t it? But some how we have such a hard time in real life. Why? This is where Flesh starts vying for canvas control. The flesh promises temporary pleasures and delights. We are promised the temporary emotional high, an appeal to our fleshly desires. Emotions are perhaps the most likely to fall to the prey of the flesh. Emotional desires are temporarily rewarding when satisfied, and we learn to love the reward.

You and I are spirit. We are not this fleshly body that will die and decay. We are meant to be worn by a body, and that body is meant to be worn by clothing. We have free will over our raiment, or our image, for good or evil. "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind." 2 Timothy 1:7 

 

So what is the point of this? Well, a few months ago I was struggling with my own out look on myself. All that I could see was how dreadfully wicked, sinful and horrible that I was. I was personally convinced that I could never be made right, that I was stuck, that I was so horrible that I couldn't be fixed. I was distraught over who I thought myself to be. That is when God told me where I was mixed up.

“You are not your sin. You are a beautiful child, created in My image. Right now you have many evil pencil marks from the enemy, but come to Me. I have the Great Eraser. I will remove your sins as far as the East is from the West. Then I will paint over you such a beautiful picture. You may only think them to be little strokes now, but in eternity you will see that they fit into my great mosaic. Let me make you a gem. You are not your sin. You have dominion over your actions. You CAN change. Never forget that. You, by My name, have conquered every sin. You are not trapped. For I have not given you a spirit of fear, but of power over sin and of love and of a sound mind.”

 

Shifting Sand

There once was a little girl who loved blue eyes. Every morning, she would gaze into the ravishing sky-like tone of her mother's eyes, and long for hers to look the same. But this little girl had brown eyes. As the days went by, she grew more and more insecure about her appearance, and those dark, hollow-looking eyes. One day, however, she heard someone talk about the power of prayer. If I pray, God will give me blue eyes!  This little girl closed her eyes tight that night, and fell asleep, sure that she would wake up to a pair of beautiful cerluean eyes staring back at her in the mirror. After all, God answers prayer!  When she woke up, however, she saw only the same brown eyes blinking at her in the glass. Maybe "no" is an answer, too.

Many of you have probably heard this story. And we all understand, and can relate, to its meaning and its moral. But could I suggest that this story, in the way that it's usually told, can be dangerously misleading?  The average Christian hears the lesson this girl learned, and applies a simple philosophy to their prayer life: "No" is an answer.

There is an undeniable element of truth in this statement; God will not fill every prayer request, just as He didn't see it fit to give this little girl blue eyes. The problem with the modern outlook on this idea, however, is that we think it's arbitrary. Many of us have the outlook that we present our requests to God, but never really know what to expect. God just sometimes says no.... that's all there is to it. Right?

The wise man built his house on Rock. An arbitrary "no" that we expect from God is not rock. It's shifting sand. It's changed by every draft that washes in. We don't know where we stand, if we think God is arbitrary in His answers to prayer.

The Rock is God's plan. The Rock is God's promises. The Rock is God's will.

Leslie Ludy rightly asserts in her book Set-Apart Femininity that modern prayers of the church are weak. We're afraid of receiving an arbitrary "no" from God, so often, we never step out boldly to ask for anything. So often, we act like He may not even hear us..... and many times, we have to wonder if He does.

Prayer is a difficult subject to tackle. One of the first questions the disciples asked Jesus was: "Lord, teach us to pray!"  Jesus' answer was the Lord's Prayer. Notice that, on the very second line of that prayer..... before personal requests for our daily bread, before forgiveness, before even a plea against temptation..... are these simple words: Thy will be done.

God does answer some prayers with a "no". But He is not arbitrary in his answers. God cannot violate His own nature. God will not go against His own plan. It's true that He will sometimes answer a prayer with a "no". But let's return to the story at the beginning of this devotional.

This little girl's name was Amy. Amy grew up in Europe, but she would not spend her whole life there. Later in her life, she moved to Japan as a missionary and, later, to India. She felt deeply moved when she heard stories of children forced into temple prostitution, and made it her goal to free as many as possible. A European blue-eyed, light-skinned woman sneaking into a Hindu temple would have been noticed and questioned. But an Indian woman, with tan skin and, yes, brown eyes, would be able to get in and out much more subtly. Amy Carmichael saved the lives of hundreds of children, and brought many to Christ through her work. God had a plan for her. God did not arbitrarily deny her request for blue eyes. He knew that blue eyes could compromise the mission and the sacred call He had set upon her life. God has even the tiniest, most minuscule details of our life worked out. Yes, His answer is sometimes "no". But His will is always done.

Our faith is built on shifting sands, and is changed by every tide of life as it washes in. But it doesn't have to be that way. We can build our house of prayer on the Rock. If God says He has given you an open door, then He has given you an open door. That no one can shut. (Revelation 3)  No one, whether it's personal failure, weakness, insecurity, guilt, or seemingly unanswered prayers, can shut that which He has opened.

I'm always amazed when I read Eric and Leslie Ludy's outlook on prayer and faith. They spoke in one of their books about how they had struggled with a lack of faith in their prayer lives, and had been afraid to pray boldly, for fear of an answer being no. But as their faith grew, their prayers became more and more powerful. Eventually, they came to the point where their entire lives depended on and centered around true, wrestling prayer. Even with all of that spiritual vigor, the answer was sometimes "no". But they had built their house on the Rock. Now, every time God answers no, they excitedly look for His hand in the situation. He is not arbitrarily which prayer requests to fill, and which ones to ignore; He's working out His perfect plan.

The Rock is unchanging. The Rock is immovable. It's unending, it's infallible, it's true, it's perfect, it's whole.

The Rock is also available. Are we brave enough to build upon it?

My faith is like shifting sand,

Changed by every wave,

My faith is like shifting sand,

So I'll stand on grace.

-Caedmon's Call

Flirting - A New Perspective

"Flirting is, in essence, drawing another person's 
attention toward you.

It is using your feminine power to entice another person to notice,

admire, or be attracted to you. It is putting your personality, 

body, humor, and wit on display--playing a game 
in which you score more points

the more positive attention you receive from 
the other person.

Flirting, at its core, is based in selfishness."

-Leslie Ludy

Something inside me choked when I first read these words. Maybe because it was so direct... maybe because I'd never viewed flirting as a game.............. But mostly because it had described the way I related to every single guy I knew. I couldn't think of a single one of my male friends that I hadn't acted this way toward. 

I had never consciously wanted to "flirt" with anyone. I'd tried to guard my physical interaction with guys, dress conservatively, and make sure I didn't encourage any stumbling when it came to boundaries. The physical side of my life was pure.

But what about my heart?  Behind the Christian front of my purity, the deeper part of me was busy making sure I was noticed. If I wasn't, I would try harder until it worked. If it didn't, I would often give up and decide that this particular guy must have a burning disposition against me, and there was nothing more I could do.

At the heart of flirting, we find Christianity's arch nemesis: The flesh. Flirting is about propelling your image, not conforming to His. It attempts to focus the gaze of others on ourselves, not on Christ. It lives a life that can only bring temporary satisfaction to us, and can have devastating results. Instead of being a strong and pure sister, flirting provides us with a path to manipulate, distract, and even tempt our brothers in Christ. Instead of encouraging them to chase Jesus, we're inviting them to chase us. When we decide to flirt, we're not only submitting to the voice of our flesh, but we're making it much easier for the guys around us to submit to the voice of theirs. 

When God confronted my heart about the fliratious attitudes I had carried with me for so many months, I was overwhelmed by a sense of guilt. I knew that some of the guys I had distracted had been making deliberate attempts to protect their hearts for their future wives, and pursue Jesus in a deeper way. Instead of strengthening them in this, I was becoming a weapon of the Enemy in their lives; I was more like the brazen woman who distracts and provokes the man depicted in Proverbs than the radiant portrayal of a set-apart woman in Proverbs 31. 

I sat down that night, and actually wrote a letter to my brothers in Christ that I had had this attitude toward the most. (No, I never gave it to them, and I'm never planning to, but it served as a great reminder to my heart.)  The letter apologized for trying to gain their attention, always wanting to be number one, for living under my flesh, and for the state of my heart. 

On the opposite spectrum there's the almost equally unbiblical attitude of avoiding certain guys altogether. The Bible calls us to be pure in our interactions with the opposite gender, but does not demand that we stop these interactions completely. Paul's letters encourage brothers and sisters to work together and strengthen each other in Christ. We are even called to correct each other. Obviously, admonishing in love requires some level of trust and friendship. God never designed us to avoid guys completely. 

I enjoy being around my guy friends. They're funny, and entertaining, and it does feel good to receive positive attention from them. But my goal is that, in these friendships, my heart would be selfless. I want the cross to gain more positive attention from them than I do. I want them to look at God more than they look at me, when we converse. I want Christ's life to radiate through me, and not just show off the simple, meaningless things that I have to offer in my own strength. My goal is to end the manipulation. To stop trying to turn their eyes. To encourage them with a pure heart in their walk with Jesus, and to be their sister in Christ, and not expect anything more. 

Join me?

Guest Article - Standing on Rock

---

TUESDAY, MAY 20, 2014

STANDING ON ROCK

It’s amazing how tempting it can be to run anywhere but to God’s Word whenever we are struggling with doubt and confusion.  We often think we’ll find comfort and perspective in the words and ideas of our fellow humans instead of in the eternal Word of God. But human thoughts and ideas are only beneficial if they are in harmony with the timeless truth of Scripture.  All other ideas, notions, concepts, and suggestions are worthless.

For many years of my life, whenever I walked through a crisis or difficulty, it would plunge me into depression, doubt, or blurriness.  Spiritually speaking, I couldn’t see which end was up.  I felt like I was standing on unstable sandy ground.  I began to question God’s love for me and wallow in confusion.  Trials seemed to only drive me further away from Him and make me feel uncertain about certain aspects of my Christian faith.  I would try to “process” through my confusion with others or seek advice through various self-help books or counseling.  And though I sometimes received a good suggestion here or there, I never found the unshakable clarity I was craving.

But then God awakened Eric and I to a principle which has completely altered the way we respond to difficulties…learning to stand firmly upon the Rock of Truth. Now, whenever we are hit with confusion, uncertainty, or difficulties, we’ve learned to immediately search the Word of God for answers.  And when we find them, we reckon them as fact, no matter what our current feelings, past experiences, or present circumstances may say.

For example, there have been times when we’ve been falsely accused and threatened by people we once trusted.  In those times, the emotions of fear(what if they act upon their threats?), doubt (if they hate me so much, does God still love me?), and confusion (why would God allow this to happen?) are extremely loud.  But we have become confident in the fact that we will gain clear, Heavenly perspective by taking time to deliberately put “rock beneath our feet” by standing on the Truth of God’s Word. 

To answer the fearful question “what if they act upon their threats?” we remember the promises of God’s protection in Scripture such as “no weapon formed against you shall prosper” and “you will surround the righteous with favor as with a shield” (Is 54:17a, Psalm 5:12) .  The more the voice of fear seeks to distract us, the more we meditate upon the reality that we are under the shadow of His wings.  And soon, our fear is replaced with peace. 

To answer the question, “if they hate me, does God still love me?” we remember that false accusation for Christ’s sake is actually an honor and a cause for rejoicing. (Luke 6:22-23)  And even though we may be tempted to doubt God’s love for us when false accusation comes our way, we choose to stand upon the fact that His Word says the opposite.  And soon, our doubt is replaced with faith. 

To answer the question, “how could God allow this to happen?” we remember promises such as “all things work together for good…” (Rom 8:28) and “what the enemy means for evil, God will turn to good” (Gen 20:30).  We begin to stand firm upon the reality that God will turn everything that the enemy means to harm us into something that will bless and benefit us, even if we can’t see the end of the story right away.  And soon, our confusion is replaced with clear Heavenly perspective.

Time and time again, we have seen our circumstances and our emotions align with the Truth of God’s Word as we simply choose to agree with what God said.  But we have learned that we cannot wait for our feelings to agree with Scripture before taking it as fact.  Rather, we accept God’s Truth as fact and command our feelings to agree with it.

By applying this principle for many years, Eric and I are no longer like infants being “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming” (Eph 4:14).  Confusion is gone, and clarity reigns in our hearts and minds.  Why?  Because we have rock beneath our feet.

If you can learn to stand upon the solid rock of God’s Word in every situation you face, you will not be vulnerable to the crafty distortion of Truth so common today.  When you are exposed to human ideas that do not agree with Scripture, you will be much quicker to recognize and renounce them in your soul.  And when the enemy tries to bait you with confusion, doubt, or despair, you will have a means to finding the clarity and Heavenly perspective you need.

Wallowing in doubt, confusion, and uncertainty is hip and trendy in modern Christianity.  Some churches even host what they call “Doubt Nights” - where everyone gets together and vents their doubts about God and His Word.  Confusion is celebrated today.  But what a miserable way to live!  Why would you choose to look at a distorted view of a sunset through a filthy window when you could look through a sparkling clean one instead and see it in all its breathtaking beauty?

If you are being blown here and there by every wind of teaching and overwhelmed by your own doubt and confusion, God is ready to plant your feet firmly upon the solid, immovable Rock - which is Jesus Christ Himself.  He is willing to replace your confusion for glorious clarity - if you are willing to take Him at His Word.

God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? (Num 23:19)

Written by Leslie Ludy

Taken from: http://www.setapartgirl.com/leslie-ludy/blog/05-20-14/standing-rock