For God has not given sin power over me.

This is the post I hate to write. It's the post I'd rather cover up quickly with 5 or 6 inconsequential posts just so it gets buried a little faster. It's the post that I wish others couldn't read. It's the post that I'd like to pretend didn't exist within myself. At this exact moment though, I'm wishing it didn't exist mostly because I do not want to write this post. I guess it's time to get it over with though.

Within the recesses of my heart I imagine great things are happening. Purity is taking place, righteousness and other well known and pleasant fruits of the Spirit are growing. Instead, I found a dark and dirty section full of filth and fungi.

Two months ago I wrote this post where I told how I was praying for my replacement. The person who would take my place playing the piano for my church after I left.
And I mean every word of it still... I really do.
Really.

And then I went to visit the church and met my replacement. She's wonderful -she's even got the ability to play with soul, a particular ability I never managed myself. I truly enjoyed listening to her play.

And then it came... the thought that now that Sundays will no longer be a glaring reminder that I'm not there to play the piano for them I will lose my tentative connection to all these people I still long for and miss.
It gets worse, I even specifically refrained from e-mailing any of them this past week so I could see if they would remember me.

Can I tell you how much I'm not enjoying this confession?

But for all my years of Christian training, for all my posts on Christian growth, I'm still fighting hidden icebergs of sin. For all my talk, for all my hours of Christian service, sin still pops up and bites me. So guess what? No one is safe. And all those people you imagine as never having those embarrassing sins, the truly selfish ones that no one would want anyone to know about them (eg. this post) well, let me be the first to tell you - they do.

Worship leaders struggle with pornography, that church secretary is struggling with lust, that usher that has been so great a part of your church for 37 years struggles with greed and the temptation to steal. That childrens minister that you love so much and look up to for all he's done for your kids? He's got a problem with lying.

No one is safe. Not from the devil. The more you try to be clean, the more he'll try to smut you up.

So here's the thing I'm embracing out of it. The necessity of being a whole person. One that struggles with sin, looks at it and sees it for it's nastiness and then works to root it out. Hiding it, and pretending that sin never knocks on my door or could ever be found in my heart doesn't do as much good as this all-too-humbling post might. Exposing sin, and refusing to give it the power of shame over me.

I feel obstinate as I write this. My thoughts turned to how much I did not want anyone to know my foolishness and I realized that that was as much from the devil as the original sin was. The instinctive idea of hiding was disappointing to me. I believe the devil wants me to hide, to hide in a little hole of self-recrimination and imagine a world of perfect Christians that me and my selfish little ways will never measure up to. But I refuse.

All that said, I hope you got some good out of this post, because it killed me to write it. But that's the good part. No, the best part. You see, I needed to die. Romans 6:6

The angry post.

**Disclaimer, I am officially ranting at myself. I will be broad and generalize in some areas because if this hits you too then I am very thankful. If I mention something that you specifically are doing then I assure you I am not trying to hit you, but it's because I'm trying to think of examples and that is one. You can be a perfectly good Christian and do whatever you're doing that I use as an example I'm sure. So please know, this is a rant specifically aimed at myself because I need to hear it and no one else will say it to me. And yes, I am angry.**



STOP.

Just stop with all the petty excuses, stop with all the flowery words and religious mumbo jumbo talk. The blogging world doesn't need to hear it, your co-workers don't need to hear it, your church family doesn't need to hear it. Just stop PLEASE.

Now repent.

Your one and only number one priority is to be a Christian.
It's not to be a good daughter, good wife, good friend, good employee.

You are to be a Christian.

So when you make some stupid thing, more important than chasing after the holiness and righteousness of God - then you are shallow. The world doesn't need any more shallow Christians. The world needs a Christian, YOU, to be spending time in Gods Word, and in PRAYER (not just the prayers you pray while doing your household chores but undivided attention, focused, heart-rendered PRAYER). EVERY SINGLE DAY. And I don't mean 15 minutes a day.

DO YOU GET THAT?

15 minutes a day?

Are you really going to change the world by spending 15 minutes with God a day?

Clean laundry is NOT more important than your time digging into Gods word and praying EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Your kids t-ball game? NOT MORE IMPORTANT. And if your kids t-ball game is going to interfere with that time with God, guess what - T-ball needs to be unenrolled from. Oh, and if that t-ball game keeps you from church then you never should have enrolled in the first place.

MY JOB is not to make sure that my niece and nephew knows their Aunt Net loves them. *And it hurts a little bit just to write that out. MY JOB is to seek GOD with all my HEART, and with all my SOUL, and with all my MIGHT. And I'M NOT DOING THAT.

There are many around me weak and sick because I've made TRASH more important than that purposeful EVERY SINGLE DAY time with God. I'm not tapped into power that I should be tapped into, because I haven't paid the cost, I haven't sought the LORD with all my MIGHT.

I want to be a Christian. But I DO NOT want to be like the Christians I know. Because we are all weak and foolish. We have L O S T what our purpose is as a child of God, and became mediocre respectable clones of what "Good Christian Folk" should look like.

Church is not to be a place where respectable people come to act respectably. Church is where children of God show up to confess their faults to each other, to provoke each other to good works, to pray for one another. And that's why I should never have dared to miss. Because I'm not supposed to have gone for what I can get, but because I have a responsibility to my church family to be there to do those things for them as well.

So when I skipped church because I was SICK. I was insane.

Because that is where the collective power of healing prayer should be the strongest.

I confess, IT'S NOT. But it's HIGH TIME that I started expecting things of the church people. It's high time I showed up sick, and vomiting and walked in expecting these people to have BEEN IN TOUCH WITH GOD during the week so that the prayer of faith can save the sick.

It's time, no, it's PAST TIME I came in to church expecting something, reached out for something and was bitterly and vocally disappointed if I didn't get it, and maybe even refused to leave until I did. But I don't have a single right to complain if I've allowed work, or packing, or painting, or whatever to come between me and MY EVERY DAY TIME WITH GOD.

It's high time I unpacked God from His simple place in everything that I do and said HE MUST HAVE DEVOTED TIME EVERY SINGLE DAY.

And that's all there is to it. Christians are weak, and pathetic compared to what God would have us be. I am weak, and pathetic compared to what God would have me be. And it's all because I've let other things be and s t a y more important. DEAR GOD I'M SORRY!

What have I done? How dare I have spent all this time blogging... over a 1000 posts, talking about God but, too busy blogging to give Him REAL time so that He can work in me what HE WILLS. Oh GOD be merciful to me a foolish child!

The problem, I so often tell myself, is that I just don't have enough time, or that I'm tired. And the absolute truth of the matter is that whatever else I did that day, whether it's dishes, laundry, family time, or even volunteer work was allowed to be more important than God to me. I can excuse it away, I can say it's not so, but that's simply not true. And so whatever I'm doing that's keeping me from that time needs to be cut out from me.

And here's the clincher - I probably don't want to let it go.

That's why it's been there for God knows how long preventing me from spending GOOD SOLID AMOUNTS OF TIME in Gods word, and in earnest prayer each day.

Which, with this revelation, leaves me at an impasse: Do I let it go? Or do I put God second?

And if I put God second to whatever it is, that tells me I have made it an idol in my heart. And God is clearly a jealous God who covets every last bit of me. And for the record, carrying on and not changing IS a choice in itself. And a slap directly into the face of God. It's SIN.

............

The problem isn't that I fill my time with sins. I can fill it with so many good works. But God wants me to seek Him, seek Him FIRST and FOREMOST, and then He will add things to me that I might be working to add to myself right now (to the exclusion of God).

Christianity has to be the simplest thing in the world.

Love God, seek God FIRST.

It's only complicated because to put God first, whatever is first now has to move. And that's a struggle of the highest degree.

God help me die. Please God help me die to myself. I don't want to be a halfway Christian. I don't want to live a life for myself with You simply a part of it rather than the whole of it. Because that's what I'm doing now. And it shouldn't be that way. I can sing the song about You burning away sin and dross, but when I do I'm always talking about sin. Dross is defined as "waste, base, inferior" and that's what everything is compared to You.
Yet I spend more time reading blogs than Your word. I spent more time checking and responding to e-mails than praying. I spend entire weekends deeply focused on my niece and nephew, yet You gets 2.5hrs Sunday morning and 1hr Sunday night and the random worship evening in my home. I'm sorry God. So sorry. This life, I get that it needs to be all consuming. But also, when You consume it I won't have lost everything. Everything would be consumed right along with me. I wouldn't lose. I would only win. But, dying is hard to do that's why I need help.

I want more of You Lord, You must increase and I must decrease.

Please God, HELP!

Baptism, death, joy, healing.

I was rebaptized today.

I hate to be dramatic, and using the word "death" all the time just seems dramatic, but in the moments just prior to being baptized I was praying harder than ever before in my life that God would give me strength to die.

I don't want to spend another day chasing things, moments, fears that keep me from the life that being completely dead offers.

I confess with resignation that I went down in tears. I was mess enough already without the added bonus of being dunked under water. But I could only cry more as I was reminded of the words "I have baptized you in tears."

But just prior to the baptism, we had been singing "I surrender all" and I was caught by the last verse:

"All to Jesus I surrender. Now I feel the sacred flame. Oh, the joy of full salvation - Glory Glory to His name"

I don't know why it struck me, but just moments after I came up from the water, I expected to still feel broken and pleading, but instead I had those words running through my head "Oh the joy of full salvation." "Oh the joy of full salvation." "Oh the joy of full salvation."

I smiled.

Something had changed. And while the art of getting wet doesn't change anything, the fact that I obeyed the simple command of "do it" is good. Though I confess, I was fortunate to have a pastor who agreed to do it, then picked the date, then ordered me into the room. To say I was reluctant.. is... putting it mildly. I'm certainly glad to have it done.

I'm also certainly glad that, while someone did have to push me through the steps, I was obedient.. enough.

But, I found some joy today. Joy in my salvation and I really think God tried to make sure I knew it was coming. I've spent the last couple of years either crying, hurting, or otherwise very somber. There have been wonderful, amazing times as well, but if I had to choose the predominant emotion of the last two years it would be hurt.

And I wonder, vaguely, if that isn't why I've been at the church I've been at. I once described it, as a hospital because it seems to attract the hurting and broken, it attracts those struggling with sins that addictively twist peoples lives into oblivion. The list includes several seemingly perfect people who, much like myself, looked hurt and bitterness in the eyes and then bent down under the weight.

Perhaps that's why I am now permitted to leave.

I no longer need a hospital.

Though, speaking of hospitals. My sunday school class and I are praying for Dr Pate, who is missing half a finger, that his finger will be made whole. If you could join us in this heartfelt prayer, I'd appreciate it. I'd love to silence the snickering of 5 kids imagining praying for his finger to grow.