This is a cry from the very depths of my soul. A cry to my God, Father, Counselor, Creator of Heaven and Earth to awaken the church in a deep and revolutionizing way.
Over the last 3 years, I have been on a journey. I have had to stop the direction I was headed and was forced to take another route. My health was failing and my body needed a solution that was real. During these times of rest and extreme overhaul of my habits, I have had many encounters with God. I am going to be as honest and transparent as I can be. What I write may surprise some, anger others, and bring hope to the rest. Here is the beginning of my journey.
At the time that my symptoms started I was working 7 days a week, attending church four days a week and volunteering 1-4 days per week as well. I was physically drained, emotionally weak, and I felt like a failure most of the time. Nothing that I was doing was producing real life. In fact, although many great things were happening in a spiritual realm, it was only skin deep.
One day I clearly heard the Lord say, ” I never called you to be the sacrifice”. I stopped, pondered, considered and contemplated those words. I realized in minutes that I had become that old Michelle, who can outwork anyone with a smile on her face. Why, because I felt driven that God was not enough to make me something of real value, that I had to work harder than anyone to be, who He called me to be. So, I started saying no to things and making different choices.
The next word of correction that I heard was about Facebook. The Lord said to me, “who are you posting those things for”? I said, “people who don’t go to my church”. He then said, “they don’t want to see any of that. Michelle, why don’t you post what they would want to see”. I preceded to remove everything off my Facebook page regarding my church, church service, God encounters, testimonies, scriptures, and Jesus inspiring posts. I then posted a photo of our family. In seconds my family and friends from around the world started liking my post. I was saddened that I had been so clueless.
He started showing me how people who don’t go to church will never be won over on Facebook, by a religious saying. In fact, all religious sayings make us look…..religious. I want to clarify that I used to belong to a church organization that said, “we are not religious, religions like Catholics, Baptists …. now they are religious”. But, what I have found is that religion is bigger than any church title, it creeps into every home, school, business, sport, or association. There is no limit to extensions of religion, except the limits that we put on it.
If the goal is to evangelize or even be a friend, shouldn’t we show ourselves as friendly? I am convinced that it will never happen by way of any religious jargon. We can only cause people to want to know us through the love of Christ, which is pure, genuine and unpolluted. Every form of religion actually kills the desire of people to want to know us or Jesus. Religion is ugly, arrogant, prideful and repulses everyone, except other religious folks.
Religious folks from any sect, usually compete with one another in their righteous acts. I have seen an abundance of things written on Facebook about religious deeds. All the details of a non-christian put out there for the world to read, with the Christian appearing as the hero. If someone wrote on Facebook about me, the way I have seen written about others, I would never want to talk to that person again. I would feel like I was a notch on someone’s religious belt. It is easy to fall into that trap when we get rejected by people for loving God. Then when we finally find people we can talk to about Him, it sometimes gets out of control as we become more zealous. Lord help us to see.
When I did hair, a fellow church members almost got me fired from my job. Her religious concepts were so obnoxious, that the owner of the salon I was working at had a meeting with me. She was kind, generous, and gave me directions on how she expected her salon to be run. She didn’t want religious anything in her salon. But, she loved God, and spoke of Him often in private settings with me. She had lost her husband to cancer and longed for more of God. But, she didn’t associate religious acts with loving God.
Listening to Christian music, praying for people publicly, reading a bible, going to church, and talking like a religious person does not make anyone a Christian. I had to gracefully stop all of my activities with this fellow church goer. We were supposed to be doing makeovers together, but religion got in the way of our success. I have learned if I want anyone to talk to me and listen to anything I have to say, all religious jargon must go. Otherwise, I will be remembered as the clueless, arrogant, self-righteous, wanna-be.
The 3rd thing that He deposited in me was the concept of humility. I have been on a twenty year process of humility. Sincerely, I thought I was O.K. in that department. I found out, I wasn’t. Here are my thoughts on humility. When we are humble we possess these characteristics.
1. We are eager to listen and learn from anyone, especially from people of a lower position.
2. We remove the idea that arrival is possible, obtainable or the goal. The goal is total reliance on God to achieve anything. We can only boast on His abilities. This is not condemnation, this is humility.
3. We look for the good in others and are drawn to others because of the goodness we see in them.
4. We long to be like children, simple in heart, submissive in attitude.
5. When asked to do something we are grateful that we are available for the task.
6. There is no task too low for us to do.
7. We don’t carry comparison charts.
8. We do esteem others higher than ourselves.
9. We don’t feel the need to correct, talk, show, tell, help, advise or re-align anyone, except ourselves.
10. We give everyone the benefit of any doubt.
Here is the last thing that I will discuss today. One day the Lord said to me, “Michelle, what do you think people would think of someone who attends church 4 days per week, but has no time for other people. Other people would be children, spouse, co-workers, neighbors, friends, and family from around the world. As I sat and pondered that question, I started to cry and truly hated what I had become. I realized what a joke I was and that my walk with Jesus would never be seen because, my priorities were wrong.
Here are the priorities I am striving for now.
1. Take care of my relationship with God.
2. Take care of me.
3. Take care of my relationships with the people I live with, my children, family, and friends around the world.
4. Be friendly, approachable, and full of joy daily. Pursue my God given assignments with joy in and out of my house.
5. Notice, notice, notice others.
7. Give my all, in all that I do. But, not to the detriment of myself.
8. Attend my church and be faithful to it.
My goal in writing this is to bring illumination to the wrong directions of pure hearted people. I am not here to judge you. I pray that what was shown to me, may reveal things that you may need to alter. I write this with a broken heart, that in my zeal, like Paul, I missed the mark. Since I have started implementing these basic truths, I feel the entire world opening up for me. There is not a person that I can’t converse with, and I get approached by strangers everywhere I go. I used to approach people, now children, teens and adults come up to me and start talking to me first. Many times people will talk to me about God. I have been able to give my testimony many times and pray for tons of people now. Why? I put away my religious speech and put their needs above my own. I don’t need to talk about Jesus to feel important, I get to talk about Him with people who long to hear about Him.
I could say more but this should get us started on a different course of balance and vitality with purpose. You have a call on your life. Your call is to be the best you that God can design. I pray that we all give up our religion and find the call that Jesus gave us long before we entered this planet. It is a call that produces all the gifts of the spirit, flowing in love and normal living. I can honestly say, that had I not changed I don’t know where I would be? But, because I did change, everything in my life is getting better than I could have imagined, including my health.
May you start your journey this day. Selah
