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December 16, 2022 - February 6, 2023
I saw that Christianity wasn’t just about me—my faith, my study, my growth, my self—but was ultimately about God. It seems like such a basic conclusion, but it was profound in the moment. Until then I’d been seeking Jesus to learn more about myself. I sought Him to find peace or to get away from the effects of my sin. I followed Him, but mainly as a means to an end, and my spiritual life reflected that. When I began searching for God for God’s sake, I discovered the kind of spiritual walk Jesus came to initiate. I discovered what He meant by His promise that He had come to give us abundant
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We need more than “pink fluff” theology of out-of-context Bible verses, compliments to our personalities that never challenge us to grow, and topical messages about womanhood and identity. We are tired of the Bible being watered down and made palatable. We need and want truth, because only truth will set us free.
Being told we’re beautiful in God’s eyes is a surface response to a soul-deep problem. That problem is our own sinfulness. Sinfulness isn’t a word we like to attribute to ourselves. It’s uncomfortable and ugly. We’d much rather talk about God’s love for us—and that’s what many female writers and teachers do. But when we ignore the impact of sin on our own natures, we can’t comprehend the greatness of God’s love.
God doesn’t love us because you and I deserved it. He loves us in spite of ourselves. We are so sinful, so unable to bridge the gap between ourselves and a holy God, that He sent His Son to die on our behalf.
often we don’t live out the gospel because we haven’t heard it taught accurately. Many of us assume that if God loves us (a word we often define emotionally) and we love Him back on an emotional level, somehow we will live a life of eternal impact.
In crisis, we discover just how weak this gospel is. In the midst of a marital fight, a debilitating illness, or a sudden financial setback, knowing we are beautiful daughters of God falls rather flat.
The complete gospel—our sinfulness, God’s grace, Christ’s imputed beauty—empowers us with a strength the incomplete gospel cannot supply. Without the whole truth about who we are and what God does for us, we will never know the fullness of the life God intends for us.
Flawed theology always turns attention away from God and onto ourselves, and that’s exactly what has happened with women’s ministry today. The messages preached to us almost inevitably focus on…us. While it might seem logical that if we focus on ourselves more, we’ll change ourselves for the better, that’s not how discipleship works. Turning our eyes to Jesus is how we are transformed. Change comes by His power, not ours.
Theological education—learning about God, the Bible, and how these truths apply to life—is not just for men or for those called to ministry. Women must be spiritually equipped with the knowledge of God through His Word so they can minister to the people around them. This requires participating in a depth of study to which many women aren’t accustomed. Such education requires more spiritually mature women to disciple their weaker sisters.
The true gospel is available to all of us through God’s Word. We must learn to study it. We must know it well enough to rightly divide the truth and check teachings against the Word of God as the Bereans did (Acts 17:11). In other words, we must cultivate a holy curiosity.
Until we desire a deeper understanding of God, we’ll settle for the half-hearted messages we’ve been given up to this point. But desire for God is an elusive thing. Some days we long to know God with great fervor. Other days we fall asleep on our Bibles. If we base our pursuit of God only on our feelings, we’ll never be consistent. Desire is a necessary part of deepening our relationship with the Lord, but it’s not possible in our own strength. We need transformed desires and hearts reflective of His.
Going deeper spiritually requires a shift of focus. We must turn our eyes away from our failures and successes, our ugliness and our God-given beauty, and instead fix our eyes on the perfection of Jesus Christ.
Our self-discovery is not God’s goal. We are meant to know God and make Him known.
God is a pursuer, but He will not force you to choose Him. If you want to have a deeper relationship with the Lord, He offers you every opportunity, but you must be the one to take it.
God wants us to experience Him. But experiencing God doesn’t begin with emotion. It begins with desire, and it is accomplished by diligence.
Our former self and the natural bent to our fleshly desires prevent us from reaching perfection this side of heaven. But each day we draw closer to Christ, deepening our understanding of and our relationship with Him, we become more and more like Him. This process is called sanctification. This theme recurs throughout Scripture, using terms such as consecrated, set apart, and holy. While justification is a one-time event at salvation (a change of status before God), sanctification is progressive. The process of being sanctified lasts all our lives and reaches fruition when we enter into glory
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We don’t go deeper with God by reflecting more on ourselves, or even by reading God’s Word to look for insight about ourselves. Roots of spiritual growth develop as we seek God for who He is and allow Him to do the transforming work in our hearts that we can never do on our own. He is the one who plants the desire to seek Him. He is the one who meets us when we apply diligence in faith.
By letting go of the idea that there is an ideal quiet time, we allow ourselves the freedom to know God through His Word in the toughest of seasons.
We have to get beyond the belief that we must have a perfect quiet time and the right devotional books and the dependence on others’ interpretations to open God’s Word for ourselves. We need the full gospel—the gospel that began in Genesis and runs to Revelation like a “scarlet thread,” a continual story written in blood—in order to find a deeper spiritual life in this shallow world. Finding this life is not easy. It takes diligence. But diligence is what a student of any kind must cultivate in order to gain knowledge. And that’s what we, as believers, need to do.
He invades the hardest places of our hearts to teach us the truth about abundant life.
Just as the incomplete gospel creates a flawed theology today, this incomplete worship caused the woman to live in perpetual bondage. Her broken past defined her. Abundant life evaded her. Jesus’s next words were like the sounds of shackles breaking: “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth,
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Brokenness becomes our identity when we live out a surface-level faith. Abundant life evades us because we don’t understand what Jesus offers through the gospel. The Samaritan woman represents every person who is going through the motions of faith but failing to live out its overcoming power.
Even today, shame is overwhelming. It keeps us from drawing near to God. It drives us into a spiral of defeat. And it is perpetuated by misunderstanding the gospel Jesus offers.
If there’s one thing about female Christian culture that breaks my heart, it’s how great we are at taking a pretty Instagram photo of our quiet time spot or tricking out our Bibles with trendy tabs and paint…and how poor we are at truly studying God’s Word.
The goal of time with God is worship of God.
Etymologically, worship means to “attribute worth to” the Lord (or whatever you are worshipping). God is the most valuable, worthy person we will ever know. Yet we often attribute more worth and value to sleep, social media, and friends than we do to Him. Our worship is naturally revealed through our daily habits and behaviors. The things we think, say, read, watch, and do reveal what we’re worshipping.
A worshipful heart… •Ascribes glory to God and rehearses His goodness (1 Chronicles 16:29). •Emphasizes His holiness (Psalm 99:1-5). •Changes our posture and leads us into humility (Psalm 96:6). •Recognizes idols for what they are and does not attribute worth to anything but God (Daniel 3:28). •Is led by the Spirit and based on God’s truth (John 4:24). •Brings an offering. In the Old Testament this was an animal, in the New Testament it is our bodies, to be used for God’s glory (Romans 12:1). •Remembers that God is and always will be God and that He is both approachable and awesome (Hebrews
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God wants us to know Him and, by knowing Him, be known by Him.
Devotion to God is a dance of dedication and grace. As we dedicate ourselves to knowing God and put effort into our relationship with Him, He gives us grace for our growth.
Digging into God’s Word when you struggle to understand it is hard, but remember: You’re not the only one showing up. God rewards those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). And it is through the Bible—both Old and New Testaments—that God has chosen to reveal Himself.
There’s a beautiful freedom in simple reading and prayer. Don’t let false guilt over your time with God keep you from sitting at His feet. Choose instead to fight for your relationship with the Lord.
Because we lack focus and are distracted and inconsistent, we default to quick studies or devotionals. These give us a surface knowledge of Scripture and thus a surface experience with God. And because going deeper takes time, it’s usually the first thing to go when our schedules get busy. But if we truly want to live the overcoming life and want to experience the living water Jesus promised the Samaritan woman, we have to take time to go deep in study and prayer.
It is time to stop looking at the Bible for quotes and application and instead look at it as a means to know the living God.
We take the law of love, which was meant to keep us in harmony with Him, and add an extra burden to His commands. Then, when the burden becomes too heavy, we blame God for being unreasonable and run from His grace.
That’s what legalism does: It limits God, minimizes who He is, and blinds us to His true work. Legalism presents Him as caring more about outward actions than the heart behind those actions, even though Scripture shows us a God who is most concerned about the motives of our hearts (1 Samuel 16:7).
Legalism is always the product of misinterpreted Scripture.
Legalism starts when we take biblical principles (use money wisely) and expand them to universal commands (it’s a sin to go into debt).
In legalistic Christianity, God is a father who can never be pleased. His holiness is unapproachable, and we often feel as if we can’t measure up in His eyes. Apart from Christ, that’s true. But it was God the Father who sent Jesus on our behalf. And it is God the Father whose grace makes us holy people. It is God’s grace that changes us. His mercy draws us to repentance.
Letting go of legalism is a journey. For years, I had to process unconscious guilt—which is never from God—over what I thought was the right way to be a Christian. But the “right” way to be a Christian is to follow the Spirit according to the Word. When we live under condemnation, we naturally condemn others. But when we live under grace, we are quick to offer compassion.
it doesn’t matter how many deep breaths you take, how organized your schedule is, or how relaxing your nighttime routine is. Apart from Christ, there is no lasting solution. Most of what is written about anxiety helps us live with the effects of anxiousness, but to overcome it? This seems impossible.
We aren’t sure of the balance between trust and action, so we choose action over trust. God does want us to take action—Jesus’s words indicate this—but the action we take usually isn’t what God intended.
Anxiety is overcome when we make the choice to trust God more than we trust our emotions. We do this by stepping through the anxiety and bringing it to the throne of grace over and over and over again.
God has promised that rest is available, rest produced by faith in Him. Rest for our souls is found in choosing trust when trust doesn’t make sense. We can do this not because our circumstances are ideal, but because our God is trustworthy.
Choosing to trust God is a process, especially when your mind and heart are trained to live afraid.
Choosing trust is the first step, but what are we trusting? What do we believe in if changed circumstances aren’t a guarantee? We trust in the character of Almighty God. And we believe for His saving power on our behalf.
The truth of God is most thoroughly absorbed when audibly spoken. So when anxious feelings crowded my heart and threatened my peace, I would say aloud, “God has always been faithful to me, and He will continue to be faithful to me. My God will provide all our needs.”
It’s a simple practice—rehearsing God’s faithfulness. It’s hard to choose. Our emotions tell us to dwell in fear, to try to figure it all out on our own.
God’s kindness and past provision are a template for His future actions.
As we fight to overcome anxiety (or anything else, for that matter), its negative presence must be replaced with a positive one. Conquering anxiety is great, but what will fill its place? In the well-known passage of Isaiah 26, the prophet gives us the answer: peace. And not just regular peace, but perfect peace.
Dependence is acknowledging our inability to control, predict, and secure the outcomes we want for our lives.
