Growing up in a Christian home challenged me in finding my identity and who I wanted to become as a person without offending God. Let's face it, being a Christian, a true one, or at least as faithful as can be is no easy task. Most days in my childhood, and teenage years I had multiple teachings that challenged my identity and without realizing I became a slave to everyone's teachings, advise and expectations around me. I did everything everyone told me to do, and never really took the time to discover who I was meant to be, or who I wanted to be in the Lord's kingdom. My testimony became such a priority to please everyone's expectations regarding my behavior and my reputation. I was so focused on everyone's opinions but God's, which is probably why my reputation was always on the floor no matter how much I tried. It seemed the more I failed, the more intoxicated and unhappy I became. I learned to put myself in a pedestal and falling hard every time I didn't meet my or everyone else's expectations. The reality of it all was I lost the opportunity to focus on who Christ was in my life, and pretty soon without realizing, God was a fierce and angry God, who would condemn me with any mistake I did, instead of me realizing what a perfect loving and forgiving father we have.
After a lot of prayer and feeling guilty and very convicted, I found the problem to my situation, "lack of identity, and direction." I focused on everyone and took care of everyone to the best of my ability and forgot that it meant nothing if I save every soul and lose my soul in the process. Serving the Lord was hard, because I was not following him, I was following my congregation. Following people, and putting my eyes on men took a toll on my emotions, because no matter how anointed and perfect a church member is "God knows best." Men make mistakes, no matter how prophetic, how talented, how Spirit filled they are they still make mistakes. The way I grew up didn't align to my exact convictions, and that is completely okay, now I understand it, but not in my earlier years. God created me to be me, not my family, not my leaders, not even my husband. I am unique in his eyes just like everyone else is unique, convictions will not always be exactly the same, the bible can be interpreted in so many ways, and the Holy Spirit will lead me the way I need to be led, and will lead others the way they need to be led. It is not my place to judge or worry about anyone but myself. God will use me differently then he uses everybody else, and will use everybody else differently then he uses me.
My life begun to change when I embraced my uniqueness and my convictions, and finally understood I needed to worry about God's direction in my life and not people's opinions, or directions for my life. My prayer begun to be, that the Lord allow me to discover myself without offending his presence and his Spirit. As I discovered myself, I understood I didn't belong in important leadership roles like I had always hoped for and longed, and that was completely okay. I cared about holiness, but I cared more about God's love, grace and caring nature, that a lot of the time are forgotten in big ministries, his love and forgiveness goes even farther than our understanding, It's actually so pure and extremely indescribably perfect that it has the power to cleanse us every day as we discover his perfect will in our life.
Through my mistakes I learned, and through my pride and hunger for positions and ministry, how wrong some of us are in our mindset. Some people with ministry like I once experienced, if not careful can become so full of themselves, we live in a world where leaders think they own souls, own their position, and even own their own, "Like girl, get off that cloud." In reality the only owner of our lives is God himself, things are done for him and him only so that he is glorified. There are churches who don't hang out with other churches, because they have a mentality of being "different and exclusive." I wonder how that is supposed to work out in heaven. I have read and learned of the crisis in Christ body all over the world, of it becoming all about the name of the organization, apostle titles, prophet titles, etc, they have so much pride in their names that they forget who God really is, they lose vision in the process of becoming a big shot. Jesus was a humble man, he was a man who loved multitudes, and preached the streets, he was not a GUCCI SUITED GUY, or an exclusive organization.
I have read and understood through my life, that some church members can become so invested in the organization's growth, they forget about the kingdom growth. Sometimes they care more about reputation then doing the right thing, and they forget love, grace, forgiveness and freedom. I understood I never knew who I was until I decided to take a risk, and love who God had created me to be, even though for others it wasn't sufficient. I was born to be different and that's okay. As I began to embrace my uniqueness without offending my Lord and Savior I began reaching the people around me. My relationship with my family even became better, I wasn't afraid to have a nice Christmas dinner with my siblings, and trusting the limits, and convictions the Lord had planted in my heart were in fact in the right place. I became free to do anything that the Lord gave me peace and permission to do, instead of worrying about who would see me or not. I knew that as long as I didn't break my God's expectations for my life and behavior, I could still be myself. One of my siblings that I had a rocky relationship came to tell me how big of a change he saw in me, he loved and respected the person I now was.
I understood something not everyone is willing to talk about, serving the Lord can become toxic when your heart doesn't align with his word and his will. No one can serve God in their church under another's shoes, and expectations. Serving the Lord is out of love and willingness to allow God to transform us and to glorify himself through us. God does not become pleased when we serve him for the wrong reasons, wrong directions, wrong mentality and no longer from the heart. Serving God worrying about what people say or think of you is far from passionate, and in my opinion is one of the worst things we can do as Christians. Let's be realistic, none of us will ever meet anyone's expectations Now every time I read the scripture, “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God, 1 Corinthians 10:31 (NVI)," I don't feel guilty, because no matter what people think, whatever I'm doing is full of love and passion, and whatever I am not doing, it is because I don't feel it, and it is not for me.
I have made so many mistakes trying to find who I am in Christ. Right now my husband I are waiting for God's direction to relocate, and while many opinions, concerns, and words have came to our life, we have prayed fervently knowing our season of change is near. We both have had dreams, promises and know that our Lord Jesus Christ makes no mistakes and will not fail us. We both are at peace and trust God that soon he will give us specific directions, we have made a commitment to not go anywhere until his perfect timing. At the right time and in his perfect timing the Lord will make it happen, we told the Lord wherever you want we will go, wherever we can grow, we will go, wherever you can be glorified we will go, wherever we are more needed for his kingdom that is where we will relocate. I want to encourage everyone to not fall into others expectations, its to hard, its too painful. For the longest time I never felt good enough for anyone. I Felt I was only good enough to serve and nothing more. In my hardest days the phone never rang, oh but when I was needed to do something I was the first to be called. At the end of the day I learned wanting the spotlight was my pride speaking. As wrong as I was I learned to love the simplicity of speaking of God's love showing his love everywhere I went, and that is where I felt right at home and my identity.