Hello friends and family!
I am now in the PHILIPPINES!!!!!!
One thing that I feel has been put on my heart to share is the idea of holy discontent. To start this off, I’m going to go back about three weeks while we were still is Africa.
Three weeks ago, my world race team got the privilege of attending the ID Retreat. The retreat was put on by the organization – Impact Africa – we are staying with. It was hosted for our two World Race teams along with 11 of the interns earning college credit with Impact Africa.
The ID Retreat was intended to help us find our “identity”. Now that might sound cheesy, but stick with me. The big idea of this was to emphasize that there’s a difference between the identity the world gives us and the identity God gives us. The ID Retreat focused in on our Godly identity.
Before the three day retreat, we took a series of tests. We took our Meyers Briggs personality test, strengths finders test, and spiritual gifts test. In my mind, this seemed like the opposite of what the ID Retreat was for. It felt like the “world” was judging my answers to these tests and the “world” was telling me who I was and what I was good at.
On the first day of the retreat, we got a binder with all of our test results in them with pages and pages of explanations. Grreeattttttttttt. If you know me, you know I love sitting down with a pen and paper to listen to something I don’t particularity want to listen to. (That was sarcasm if you couldn’t tell). I’m the type of person who loves to sit down and listen when it comes to something I care about, but not the other way around. Because of this, the first two days of the retreat were quite restless.
Yes I listened, yes I tried to be engaged and yes I tried to enjoy it, but it was hard.
I was annoyed at the fact that they were using “worldly” things to describe my “Identity in Christ”. It felt like they were trying to shove me into a box that I did not fit it. My results gave me 7 words. Strategic, realtor, adaptability, belief, self-assurance, administration, shepherd and evangelist. Gibberish. It all sounded like gibberish.
How in the world could intellectual words, with pages and pages of intimate and unique human explanations be accurate to my “true identity in Christ”?
Well, turns out they are – but not the way I thought they would be.
Let me walk you through how I came to this realization.
I’m sure everyone has heard or seen the list of words and scriptures telling us who we are in Christ. “You are loved, unique, strong, beautiful, worthy, courageous, wanted, made in the image of God”. And yes, these are all very true and I’m not trying to diminish their importance, but they had started to sound cliche.
I 100% trust Gods Word and 100% trust what is written about me in it. And of course, I trusted it more than the results I got from those 3 tests. So with my mind set on that, I wanted to reject those 7 words given to me, but that’s not what God had in mind.
Towards the end of the second day, we came across the topic of holy discontent.
If you do not know what a holy discontent is, I will explain. This is how our workbook explained it:
“God has given you a special intolerance for the status quo concerning an idea or issue. He laid it on your heart to be rabidly energized to change that issue. The Holy discontent you have is there, even if you can’t see it yet. Spend some time thinking about what makes you crazy about the world. Look at the news, read the paper, go to a movie, observe society around you with the eyes of an investigator, and ask God to reveal what he has wired you to be passionate about. Then, when you start to feel your heart racing when you talk about it, when you notice you’re sitting straight up in your chair and your voice keeps getting louder, pay attention.”
I’m simpler terms, your Holy discontent is that one injustice, problem or people group that you have a special place in your heart for. It’s that one thing that you know breaks Gods heart – and also breaks yours.
After those two days of being told what sounded like cliche words and general identity phrases, this was intriguing.
Holy discontent was not a new concept to me. I don’t know when I learned about it but I had always called it “righteous anger” – and I knew it was from God. Though I knew about it – and frankly knew what mine was – I had never dove into the intricacies of it.
First, I will tell you a little bit about what my Holy discontent is. I have a special place in my heart that hurts for people who feel like they have ruined their lives with the decisions they have made in the form of drugs, alcohol and prison. It breaks my heart to think that somebody believes that they are simply too far gone to ever be loved or important ever again – to people or to God. I believe that God has strongly placed a desire to do something about it in my heart.
Now I could preach and preach about this topic for forever, but that’s a story for another time. So long story short, I know my Holy discontent.
But what intrigued me about this is how I could actually feel it. When it comes to my identity in Christ, I know who I am, but sometimes I don’t feel it – and I’m sure a lot of people can relate. But I could feel a burn in my heart just thinking about it.
And what’s amazing about Holy discontent is that it is 100% God given. It says in the Bible “[God] will give you the desires of your heart”, and here is the evidence of that. God is a God of justice. And if I am made in Gods image, then my hunger for justice is a reflection of him. All the tenderness, forgiveness, gentleness and grace expressed through Holy discontent is simply an overflow of what God has already extended to us. I believe strongly that every single person has a Holy discontent given to them by God. It’s unique, its special and it’s awesome and God beckons us to act on it.
With those 7 words I got, they came to life when I applied them to my holy discontent. What I found is that I am perfectly made to do what the Lord has put on my heart to do. Though they were human words and human explanations, they helped me to know how uniquely and intentionally God made me.
I want to stress this: God intentionally created you and me. He didn’t give me strengths and talents to operate in someone else’s Holy discontent. He made me to operate best in my own! He set me up for success.
