A few year back my mom led me through a program to find my spiritual gifts. Although I cannot remember my statement word for word, the gist was encouraging broken women (spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc). I seen this played out in my life in moment where I have great conversations with women who are beat up with guilt, shame, doubt, and generally overwhelmed with the emotions of life. I'm passionate about this because I've walked through emotional and spiritual battles often. I can remember the days when guilt and shame were the only motivation to read my Bible or go to church. I feared losing relationships because I knew I couldn't live up to others standards and knew my emotions were too burdensome for anyone to carry as a friend. My identity was caught up in what I did instead of who God was to me.
Part of my healing process came in reshaping how God sees me. Most of my life I believed he was disappointed in me. I accepted the gift of the cross as a loan that I need to repay instead of a fully paid debt. You can imagine the difference between a God who gives you a loan verses a God who pays off your debt. The God who paid off my debt in full without interest or payback must have really loved me, liked me, saw potential in me, saw delight in what a relationship with me could be, and had enough riches in his Kingdom to take a risk by paying off my debt. Therefore I can stop the silliness of trying to pay him back with mindless skimming of "a chapter a day" and "10 minutes of prayer" because he didn't want my sacrifice. (Isaiah 1:13-) God had my mind with its knowledge of him but rarely my heart. If I was to love the Lord my God with all my heart, I had to know him and what he thought about me. So I began to listen. What I found was that he spoke my language, sometimes the language of sarcasm. He was perfectly pleased that my gifting were simply being a friend. He didn't require of me study Hebrew and do cold turkey evangelism 24/7. He easily forgave me on the days when I was impatient and distracted. The problems of yesterday were never held against me the next morning. The rat race of trying to be perfect was over.
Even now as I write this my mind tells me I need a disclaimer about "grace abusers"- that its a good thing to read your Bible and pray. I know I know. But if you don't know the Father and his grace then pure self-discipline is not going to carry you through life satisfied and whole. I spent too much of my time comparing myself to other Christian women resulting in constant disappointment. So I encourage you, stop doing and ask the Lord "Who are you?" and "what do you think of me?" The growth starts from there.
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