What is Your Bride-price?

An awakening is happening. God is calling His sleeping beauty, the Church, out of a deep slumber and back to her created purpose. This week at the SBC convention I was amazed by our God. The past couple of months God has been strongly dealing with me in several different areas that are sensitive and controversial. I have really been struggling with the Spirit over everything. God is God over all- not just me.

This week at the convention speaker after speaker began to share what God was personally doing with them, and I listened on the edge of my seat. God has been convicting them of the same sins and has been challenging them in the same ways. As a convention we repented of being far too much in love with this world, we voted on the Great Commission Resurgence report's recommended goals to become more effective as believers and Southern Baptists.

Persecution and trials will come. Jesus has assured us of this. I welcome them both. Maybe then the Church will remember her first love again. Maybe I will too.

God is calling each of us to wake up. Countless souls are dying into eternal damnation every second we sleep. We are accountable. Just as the Nazis were accountable for the Holocaust, we are accountable for our apathy and self-indulgence as millions die without basic needs met and without the knowledge of the Savior who died for them. The sin of omission is just as deadly as the sin of commission. Jesus said whatever we do unto the least of these we do unto Him.

Wake up.

Church we were bought for more than this.

So Thankful

I have to say with much relief that God apparently knows what He is doing. Yes, chuckle if you must. You've all felt that way before. Being the sinful humans we are from birth we all doubt if God made a "mistake" with us. Maybe you don't like your crooked nose, your short legs, or your high-pitched laugh. I don't know what "that" is, but, I am confident that you know.

For me, after I went to college and became part of the nursing program, I just hated "me." I tried to think like the other nursing students or nurses I admired. They were so analytical, so fluid with procedures, so mechanical. If you know me at all, you know I don't think that way. According to Bryan, while most people go from A to Z by reciting every letter in between, I just jump from A to Z and have no idea how I got there.

I felt ashamed of my creativity and tried hard to work on the "weak" left side of my brain. I always found myself back working on a piece of art or a craft whenever I was completely stressed out. The right side of my brain could be ignored but not forgotten.

Since we started Peripety Designs, our web design business, I have had an amazing outlet for doing the creative stuff I used to just do for fun- no pay. Being able to support Bryan's ministry by helping our family financially has been a God-sent for me emotionally. The funny thing is that the dominant "right" side of my brain that I was so embarrassed of years ago has become my best friend. USA today wrote an article a year go titled, "Retrain your brain from "left" to "right" to fit into the new economy. Pretty neat.

I'm thankful now that I am wired to be creative. Just like the "left brainers," I have my place in this world too. It's rather beautiful the way God has set up such diversity among all of us. I find great comfort in this journey knowing that all of His details in creating me were purposefully planned. What a glorious God we serve! What other religion can brag about a god who intimately orchestrates the quirks in our personhood for a joyful, divine purpose? Praise Jesus, we can!