I am a product or I should say a recovering product of well-meaning but so often damaging Southern Bible belt of the 1960’s-1970’s. I was born on the last day of the year in 1955. I am privileged to have been born into the heritage of Jesus loving, Bible believing parents and grandparents. However, they could not protect me from what I call “being a Church kid” which simply means, as many of you are, one who was at church every time the door was open. One who knew all the right things to say and prayers to pray in order to “appear” to be “all right with my eternal destiny, in other words NOT going to hell.”
The legalism of the Church that distorts truth has always been around. I believe the first distortion presented itself almost immediately after The Church begin. (that will be another subject but is well documented in the book of Acts).
Forwarding my life to about the age of thirty I found that my “sight” and “belief” of GOODNESS was incorrect and empty. My definition of goodness was a distorted view. I thought of goodness in terms of “being” good. Goodness was nice kind people who never got into trouble or had angry or evil thoughts. I thought Goodness was people who didn’t sin a lot, at least not the BIG sins! I got this silent message that said, “yes, Grace if free but now you better teach Sunday School,  join the choir, and Never Never!!! display any outward behavior that looks like sin.  I knew and loved Jesus but I didn’t really believe that God is good. I did not know after all that time of being a Christian and loving Jesus that his goodness was and is supernatural. His goodness is intimate. His goodness is a “way” that He is. It is not just his character it is God’s being.

I finally saw that God is good in his being, he is good in his Word, he is good in his knowledge, he is good in his judgement, he is good in his works, actions and deeds. He is severely good in mercy and kind in grace. I finally know that only His goodness can satisfy my soul.
For any out there who do not know God fully in his goodness I pray today that the Spirit of God will give you eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to be intimate with Him…as for this girl…“I choose goodness and mercy to follow me all the days of my life and to dwell in the house of the Lord forever!”
girl upon Mercy
riding away
girl upon mercy singing
girl upon mercy
save from all lies
riding to live
a new day
singing…
a merciful hallelujah
singing good are you my Lord
singing mercy, hallelujah
riding on
to sing evermore.

If I had to say what were one or two of the most loved memories I have about being a southern preacher’s daughter I would say foremost I loved and still cherish being the “apple of his eye.” His only daughter, not in a princess-y way at all but just a light in his eye, a sparkle, an honor in his life that I did not deserve nor earn. Never once was there any hint or lack of favor toward me. One learns young in a “fish bowl” that people will believe what they choose and they will misunderstand a man and his heart and they will take it out on him and his family but they can never touch the “apple of his eye”. The second treasure I carry with me as a southern preacher’s daughter is the peace and stillness of the iconic “Sunday afternoon Nap.” We didn’t really have to go to sleep at all but it was a private safe haven when the world stopped turning and my two brothers, my beautiful mother, my dad, and I all took off our Sunday outfits and each lay between our washed cotton bed sheets  and rested our heads on sweet southern smelling pillows and Rested. It was a Sabbath Rest that I did not yet understand at an early age. It was a sturdy parson’s home and all was right with the world. I never knew what lie ahead for us nor that life would not always taste as sweet as those Sunday afternoons. I didn’t know yet that daddy couldn’t fix everything and that my sweet, sweet brothers weren’t men yet. I didn’t know that my mother’s southern beauty hid pain that I had not yet heard of and had no inkling of the hard things that were expected of her. I memorized each one of them and I tasted the ripened rays of childhood and it has stayed on my tongue forever! I love them.

The reality is that God is good but he is not safe…

I have two friends who give me counsel that I treasure. They both told me years ago “you have to get out of your head! You are MORE than your head…”

I have a fine mind. I am thankful for it. I would say I have an average intelligence quotient and am satisfied with it. I was not cut from the “genius mode.” What I have learned over the years is this. ..longings and desires are wired in us. They are designed to point us to the POINT of “being here.” I have also learned that knowledge without character is evil and pointless.

When I am in my head I have the tendency to become hyper-vigilant so I can control my longings as this makes way for the illusion of having control over my world but the truth is I cannot control other people, wars, countries, religions, or what might happen to my children or grandchildren. Of course, I certainly play a part in my choices, thoughts, and actions! It is called self-control but control, as in the ways of the  Sovereign God, no.

Sometimes it is hard to make things clear but when  I purposely look and listen I then see and hear without a doubt. I  have  four longings that exist in my soul. My longing to know the God that made me, the longing to not just know Him but to “get to him”, and the most compelling longing is to know that this same Holy God wants me, sees me, hears me, and desperately extravagantly loves me. A love so far beyond anything my fine mind can know on a cherished level. My fourth longing is for not just my family but all of the human race to know this too.

While all of this sounds deep and romantic there is a catch. In the words of C.S. Lewis in the Chronicles of Narnia series of books the characters repeat over and over that   Aslan, the lion in the book who saved the world, is GOOD but he is not safe. He is a wild and wonderful and good Savior but he is not tame.

A lion, the Lion of Judah is “wild” in every sense of the word. He certainly cannot be contained in my fine mind! There  is no safety net, no formula, no religious works to perform that will fulfill my longings!  my longings are absolutely and completely filled in one way…surrender. Surrender to the fear of losing my life. Surrender to the fear that the man might come to  me and tell me the diagnosis  I always dreaded. The anger that  I didn’t get the great early childhood or adolescence or adult life that  I wanted. A surrender of the wounds of abuse and yes, we all have them…

Surrender all that you love and hold dear for they are not yours anyway. This is a supernatural surrender. It is surrender to The One God sent to show us himself, Jesus.

Oh now you are saying “here it comes…some kind of sermon. No, not at all. You are the only one who can seek him and find him. You must seek him on your own. I cannot control your choices.

So to sum this up I will say that “getting out of my head” is at times impossible but my mind can be renewed daily. My mind can reach my soul and weld together within. My mind can know that I have been given everything I need for life and Godliness. I can know in my mind God sent the exact likeness of himself to dwell among us and it is He that fulfills  all of my longings. Every single one of them!

The process of longing and surrender is rarely a pretty one. It is not tame but it is Goodness and it is how I am created to be and I love that…

There wasn’t any physical bleeding involved like I thought there would be when the time came. It was more like the raw pink pain of having the top layer of your skin or a scab removed. The new skin underneath with extremely exposed nerves assaulted my brain with a relentless message of stinging immobilizing pain. My first instinct was to cover myself with the old skin so the nerves would be fooled into thinking there was no pain but then I realized there is no way to cover every area of my life that has been peeled away.

In my prosperous comfort and consumer Christian culture I am becoming more aware that I have been silently invaded by idols that often pry their way into the Christ culture and the American Dream. it reminds me of Texas chiggers which are insects unseen to the human eye but if they find you in the tall grass they will burrow under your skin and cause you to itch so badly that you are driven to distraction. I keep hearing a quote from Mr. Tolstoy in my head, “everyone wants to change the world but not themselves.” In the end however, only one man who was willing to take it all upon himself on a Cross of unbearable torture changed the world for once and for all when he rose from the dead to live forever.  It is the enormity of Jesus’ love that has caused me to shed these layers of comfort. The old manta of “if we are just good people” who keep our disobedience and sin to a tidy minimum then we are good Christians is not true. This has often been a huge comfort zone for me. One that can no longer be.

I grew up in an era that appeared to be both wholesome and bullet proof. Middle class America with a two parent home, two cars, a house in suburbia, a good school, and of course going to church. my Dad was a Pastor so Church was my life, my social arena, the litmus test for everything around me. I am left with many wonderful and terrible memories and glimpses of God and of what the family of God should be. However, the truth, as one author and pastor writes, “the True Gospel shows up best when it is brought into direct opposition with a “subtle distortion” of itself.

I have felt this magnetic pull on my life when I was taught or rather the silent message was given “behavior” is somehow in direct correlation with how good of a Christian I am. I have come to see we are often shamed and distorted in our journey with The Holy because we minimize sin, worship idols, and invoke “cheap Grace” to live however we choose. Perverting the Truth. The reality of the journey with The Holy God does ultimately lead to transformation, which is fact does change and adjust behavior. This is called Sanctification or maturity. “It is promised to us from God himself to every believer. “It is the most powerful experience a human will have and it is a process that is eternal. However, changing behavior simply to exhibit a sense of false righteousness or to be in control puts us right back into our “original sin” which is we want to be god. We crave control.” (Dr. Hud McWilliams).

So, as I continue my journey I am slightly braver now  to peel away more dead skin that might prevent or pervert my desire to continue growing in my relationship with Jesus. I hope to walk beside other believers as they peel away their old skin too so that we can hold  each other up along the way when the pain is at its most unbearable. It is God alone who Sanctifies just as it is God who reveals to us our need for redemption. Like the Father in the ancient story of the Prodigal Son the message from the Father has always been  and will always be this, “all that I have has always been yours so come home my child.”  Luke 15:32