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THINKING BACK…. In Macedonia

So while I’ve been in the lovely city of Tetovo, in Macedonia… I’ve been doing some thinking.

Just thinking about things that I’ve been reading or experiencing and thought i should put it down in writing- because sometimes, because I’m human, my memory kind of stinks and I don’t remember everything God is teaching me or things that I’ve learned. Which brings me to my first point:

I was listening to a podcast by Anthony Chapman: a new covenant- the truth about freedom (he’s from England and really makes you think http://www.rockchurch.org.uk/media/all.asp) and he talked a little bit about renewing your mind. 

The Bible says be transformed by the RENEWING of your mind. In order to be changed you have to renew your thinking. So if I am forgetting the things that “God has taught me” these things haven’t actually transformed me or changed me. You have to CHANGE the way you think if you want to be CHANGED…

And because I’ve grown up in the church I have accumulated a whole lot of learned behaviors or certain ways of thinking. Those learned behaviors have defined a lot of how and what I believe.  Why do we focus so much on behavior?? The Bible is not here to teach us what is good or what is evil but how we walk in our journey and get back in right relationship with God. Not rules to live by but a relationship to live from.

– we have to start thinking differently.

Continuing on the topic of thinking differently and growing up in church:

I grew up as a pastor’s kid, still am. Sometimes I think people have this idea that pastor’s and their families have perfect lives- which is so far from the truth. Sometimes i feel like we are denied the right to be normal.  Thank goodness my parents are awesome and normal.

But being a PK I have grown up in the shadow of my father. I have had ridiculous and unrealistic expectations placed on me by others. People’s ideas of how I should act or what I can and can’t do. Being treated favorably because of whose child I was or being treated awful until family recognition was found out. It actually makes perfect sense why a lot of pastor’s kids rebel and want nothing to do with the church. I was fed the lie that what you have to say isn’t good enough and who you are isn’t good enough. And I believed it, swallowed and digested it.

Until
I let the word and blood of Jesus wash over me and renew the way I think… and guess what, I have been changed and this is what I have to say: screw you, devil.

Let me take you on the journey of how I got there.

Before I left for this trip we all attended training camp. We were having a bonfire one night and we were taking turns declaring things over ourselves and the trip. For example, “I am the head and not the tail” “I’m going to shake the gates of hell” “I walk in peace and love” “I’m a warrior” etc etc. Well, for my turn I said, “I have a unique responsibility on this earth that only I can get carry out.” Little did I know that I was setting truth and transformation into motion.

When my team and I were in Malaysia we were at a YWAM worship/prayer meeting and towards the end they prayed over our team. Well this lady comes up to me after the prayer is over and she said, “God wants me to tell you something” and she points to my shirt (my shirt has a drawing of a piece of cake on a fork going into a girls mouth) and says, “that’s your special portion. The whole time we were praying I was looking at your shirt and God was telling me, that’s her special portion, it’s unique and it’s no one else’s. You tell her that it’s not her mom’s, it’s not her dad’s but it is her own. I am her portion and I am enough.” I have never met this lady in my life.

Next, when we were in Ireland for the Awakening Conference a woman came up to me and asked if she could pray for me. This is how the prayer went… “God I thank you that you created this girl (bek) so unique and I thank you that she has a unique responsibility on this planet that only she can do. I thank you that it is not something her parents can do or anyone else, just her. I pray that your truth would win and not the words or lies of anybody else…” Again, never met this lady. Just complete strangers. And throughout my time on the race I have had these things said over me by others who have had no idea.

It seems as though I do have a unique responsibility… and so do you.
 
Lies and sin declare us failures.  They condemn us, judge us and imprison us.  But what we lay a hold of by faith firmly declares something different and something that is above and beyond what these tihngs dictate to  us.  Namely, we are victorious over sin.
Satan and sin’s power is condemnation.  They declare that “this is all you are and this is all you can and will amount to.”
But being released from its condemning power, I have now been given a new power at work in me, and that is the Spirit of Christ. (Rom. 8:10-11)

BUT we need to renew our minds.

We need to quit listening to lies and start listening to the Holy Spirit.

My team watched 300 the other night and there is a scene in the movie where King Leonidas confronts the oracle about the future (the oracle is a female zombie sort). The words of the oracle trouble the King and Queen Gorgo says to her husband, “There’s only one woman’s words that should affect the mood of my husband. Those are mine.”

I saw an interesting parallel between Queen Gorgo and God. You wanna know what God says: He says you are able, He says I have called you, He says I knew you before you were born, He says you are mine, He says I collect all your tears in a bottle, He says you are completely cleansed and forgiven, He says I believe in you, He says you are my son and daughter, He says you are redeemed, He says you are loved.
boo yah.