Speaking!

I had the privilege of speaking today at a ladies breakfast at our church. Though a bit nervous, I was excited to use the gift I believe God has given me and minister to the ladies in that way! I was asked to speak on my "life story" and, as I prepared to speak, it was good to take time over the last few weeks to reflect on what the Lord has done in my life so-far. After I spoke, I had a few requests for quotes and so-forth, so I thought it might be a good idea to just post what I shared right here on the blog....

"My goal this morning is to be honest and transparent...that means that some of what I will say might embarrass me but prayerfully will also encourage you!

I grew up in a Christian home and I am so thankful for all that the Lord kept me from as a result...but it also created a new dilemma in my life. I became so used to “doing what I was supposed to do” that I really didn’t see myself as sinful as I was. Yes, I knew that I needed a Savior, and I believe the Lord saved me in the 5th grade...but there was a lot of Pharisee in me, too! Doing the right thing but not always for the right reasons and, even those things meant nothing to the Lord if they were not done in His strength...for “apart from Me you can do nothing” Jesus said in the book of John.

Looking back on my childhood and couple of thoughts come to mind for today:

1)Our children really do need to be reminded all the time that they are sinners and there is nothing good in them apart from Christ! They do not need self-esteem...they need to be taught to highly esteem Christ!

2)They need to recognize that their sin is, above all, against God...not you. I was often so sad about “letting my parents down” but not always sad about the fact that I had sinned against the Lord. And, it is so easy to give our kids that mindset without even meaning to...we do it by the way we respond to their sin. If their sin really bugged us or interfered with our plans we tend to make a big deal about it and come down hard on them. But, often, if they sin and it didn’t really affect us or cause us much discomfort or we just plain don’t feel like dealing with it, we say little or nothing. Our kids begin to see their sin as big sin/little sin and base what they do on the consequences. Big sin is when mom and dad get upset, little sin is when it doesn’t really get them in trouble. They begin to live within those boundaries (of consequences) forgetting that all sin is equal in God’s sight...all of our sin sent His Son to the cross. It’s God standard our kids need to be trained to live by...not ours!

Okay...back to my story! :) The story of how God kept stripping away the Pharisee in me and showing me my sin! He has used many things and continues to...to show me that I truly am helpless and apart from Him, there is no good in me.

David Powlison once shared a great illustration that I read in the book “Girltalk” by the Mahaney women and it’s been a visual for me for many years!

“If we hold out a soaking wet sponge and squeeze it, what will happen? Water will fall on the floor. We may look at the puddle and think it was caused by the squeeze. However, the squeeze only revealed what was already in the sponge. You could squeeze a dry sponge but no water would come out.

What’s the point? As with a sponge, what is in our hearts will spill out of us when the squeeze is on. In other words, difficult interactions or trying experiences (the squeeze perpetrators) are not the cause of our angry reactions; rather they serve to reveal the sin that was there all along. Matthew 15:18 says that “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart”.”


So, with the sponge illustration in mind, I’ll try to give you a snapshot of my life up until now!

*** God has and continues to use my marriage to “ring me out” and I have been and am still amazed by all the sin that resides just below the surface. I never realized just how selfish I was until I got married! Your experience may be different but, in complete honesty, the first few years of married life and especially the first year was not a “honeymoon”...it was hard! There was a lot of sin that needed to be flushed out and repented of in my own heart that I never really knew was there! If you are in your first few years of marriage and it is so much harder than you thought it would be..don’t be embarrassed to say so and to ask for godly council, wisdom and encouragement! You are learning what it means to truly consider someone else as more important than yourself...learning to love with God’s love when the rubber hits the road and your struggling to like the guy that not that long before made your heart bound at just the sight of him.

And, by the way, I am in no way saying that my dear husband is not a like-able guy...he is wonderful...but in the end, I am a sinner who married a sinner and that means sin is and will be apart of our marriage and sin is never a bed of roses. Plus...we women can be a bit hard to please, sad to say! And while we need to see the ways we sin in our wrong expectations, the following does give us a good laugh in the midst of our struggle:

The Husband Store

A brand new store has just opened in New York City that sells Husbands.
When women go to choose a husband, they have to follow the instructions at the entrance:
You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are 6 floors and the value of
the products increase as you ascend the flights. You may choose any item
from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you
CANNOT go back down except to exit the building.
So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband.
The 1st floor sign on the door reads:
Floor 1: These men Love the Lord and have Jobs.
The 2nd floor sign reads:
Floor 2: These men Love the Lord, have Jobs and Love Kids.
The 3rd floor sign reads:
Floor 3: These men Love the Lord, have Jobs, Love Kids and are extremely good looking.
"Wow," she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.
She goes to the 4th floor and the sign reads:
Floor 4: These men Love the Lord, have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and help with Housework.
"Oh, mercy me!" she exclaims, "I can hardly stand it!"
Still, she goes to the 5th floor and sign reads:
Floor 5: These men Love the Lord, Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous, help with Housework and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.
She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the 6th floor and the sign reads:
Floor 6: You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor.
There are no men on this floor.
This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.
Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store please watch your step on the way out!


All that to say, it is so very much worth working hard for the glory of God to be the wife He has called us to be and to have a marriage that honors Him. As the years go by, it keeps getting sweeter and sweeter and I better understand and agree with Elisabeth Elliot’s second husband, Lars who said,

“A wife if she is very generous may allow that her husband lives up to perhaps eighty percent of her expectations. There is always the other twenty percent that she would like to change, and she may chip away at it for the whole of their married life without reducing it by very much. She may, on the other hand, simply decide to enjoy the other eighty percent and both of them will be happy.”

***God used our first baby to “squeeze me” in what I truly believed about His sovereignty. At 5 months pregnant our son was diagnosed with Trisomy 18, an chromosomal abnormality that meant he would most likely be stillborn or would die within days or weeks of being born. I carried Garett for another 3 months and he was stillborn a month and a half before his due date. Throughout those months of waiting, knowing, crying, and praying, God’s sovereignty, His control of all things was, to us, like a lighthouse for a sailor on a stormy sea...He was our constant and our source of hope. He can be trusted completely and He must be trusted completely!

He also taught me something else. He had taken a dream I had since I was little...to be a mommy...and caused me to realize how easy it was to hope in something other than God. To love His good and precious gifts even more than the giver, God Himself. He demanded first place in my heart, required submission to His will, even when it wasn’t what I would have chosen, and helped me to see the treasure that He is and the joy and peace that comes in loving Him above all and resting in His perfect plan! All of His plans are for our good!

***Then God saw fit to twist the sponge of my heart through the gift of children. It’s almost funny to say that...but God uses all things to sanctify us...both what He gives and what He takes away! I thought I had rid the weed of selfishness from the garden of my heart as God had worked on me through marriage...but it was clearly only dormant and reappeared as the babies started and kept coming! Denying self took on a whole new meaning and it still does as it is what God has called us to, each and every day! Don’t ever think that because being a mom is hard, you must be doing something wrong...being a mom is VERY hard and requires more than we could ever give...and that’s exactly where God want’s us, right?!!! I loved this story that I read as I could so relate...I have a feeling some of you might be able to, too:

One afternoon a man came home from work to find total mayhem in his house. His three children were outside, still in their pajamas, playing in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house and there was no sign of the dog. Proceeding into the entry, he found an even bigger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall .. In the front room the TV was loudly blaring a cartoon channel, and the family room was strewn with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, the fridge door was open wide, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door.
He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she may be ill, or that something serious had happened. He was met with a small trickle of water as it made its way out the bathroom door. As he peered inside he found wet towels, scummy soap and more toys strewn over the floor. Miles of toilet paper lay in a heap and toothpaste had been smeared over the mirror and walls. As he rushed to the bedroom, he found his wife still curled up in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled, and asked how his day went. He looked at her bewildered and asked, "What happened here today?"She again smiled and answered, "You know every day when you come home from work and you ask me what in the world did I do today?" "Yes" was his incredulous reply. She answered, "Well, today I didn't do it." -Veronica Kavanagh


The blessing it is to be a mom, the struggle it is to be a mom, and the responsibility that comes with this beautiful calling could keep me talking for the rest of the morning....but then you wouldn’t get to go home and actually enjoy that gift...so, I’ll keep it short! Elizabeth Prentiss, author of “Stepping Heavenward” (a must read!) said it so beautifully in her book upon the birth of another baby:

“Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery, Here is a soul to train for God. and the body in which it dwells is worth all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ’s name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother’s heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!”


That should be the desire of all of our hearts...but we live in a culture that does not see children that way...they see them as a burden, trouble, freedom robbers...and when we do not have our eternal glasses perched on our noses, we fall prey to that lie...to not see the precious gift we have been entrusted with and the mission field right in our very own homes!

***And if 4 kids were not enough to bring me to my knees and help me see my absolute need for and complete dependence upon the Lord and His constant mercy and forgiveness, He laid it on my heart to add to that number!:) Notice I said “my heart”. Adoption was not on Bryan’s heart at all! In fact, he told me it would take a miracle for God to change his heart or he would have to die and my second husband could join me in adopting! It took a lot of waiting and praying and it still blows me away that God changed his heart so completely. Ladies...don’t nag...pray. Only God can change your husband’s hearts...you cannot. And no matter how much you may think you might like the job, you are NOT his Holy Spirit. Bryan will affectionately call me that -the holy spirit-as a gentle was of letting me know I am stepping over the lines...and it also helps remind me Who I should be going to first anyway!

Waiting is not only something I did before the “yes” from Bryan...we did a lot of tough waiting through the adoption process. I could have spent the whole morning talking about our adoption story and why we think adoption is so beautiful...not just earthly adoption...but, so much greater, our adoption, as believers into the family of God! God could have just saved us and justified us and then left us to fend for ourselves. But He didn’t...He brought us into His family, gave us His name, and all the rights of sons and daughters. It’s just amazing to dwell on...God is amazing!

I know that not all of you can relate to physically adopting kids but I know that you can all relate to waiting. It seems like we spend much of our lives waiting...waiting on someone to do or not do something, waiting for something to happen or for the situation we are in to be over. Paul Tripp said something years ago that has stuck with me ever since and has changed the way I view waiting:

"Waiting on God isn't about the suspension of meaning and purpose. It's part of the meaning and purpose that God has brought into my life. Waiting on God isn't to be viewed as an obstruction in the way of the plan. Waiting is an essential part of the plan. For the child of God, waiting isn't simply about what I'll receive at the end of my wait. No, waiting is much more purposeful, efficient, and practical than that. Waiting is fundamentally about what I'll become as I wait. God is using the wait to do in and through me exactly what he's promised. Through the wait he's changing me. By means of the wait he's altering the fabric of my thoughts and desires. Through the wait he's causing me to see and experience new things about him and his kingdom. And all of this sharpens me, enabling me to be a more useful tool in his redemptive hands."

May we glorify God in the midst of all of our waiting!

***So, this is my story so-far. Lord willing, God will give me many more years of stories to tell of His faithfulness and goodness amidst the backdrop of my sin, weaknesses, and imperfections. My goal and prayer is in Phillippians 2 and Colossians 1...to “work out my salvation with fear and trembling....struggling with all his energy that He so powerfully works in me”. As I have sought and continue to seek to fix my eyes on Christ, there have been some things that have helped along the way that I wanted to pass onto you in closing:

1)Be in God’s Word daily, it is food for your soul. Very rarely do any of us go a whole day without eating because we know what a lack of food does to our body. How much more does our soul...our spirit and emotions...need the daily strength and sustenance that can only come from God’s Word! Something that has been a wonderful help and discipline for me the past 7 years is a read through the Bible plan. John MacArthur has taken the Word of God and put it into a “daily read” format in his book “The MacArthur Daily Bible” and it’s my favorite!

2)Pick up a book that is Biblically sound and will spur you on to Christ-likeness and START READING! Just reading ONE PAGE a day will allow you to read about 2 books a year! You have to start somewhere...and oh, the wealth of godly encouragement that is found in the pages of a good book! My heart and soul has been richly blessed over the years from the words of Godly men and women! And, if you are not sure what to start reading...see any of the pastors or their wives...you’ll get enough suggestions to last you for years, I bet!:)

3)Lastly...cling to, memorize, meditate on, and make 2 Corinthians 10:5 your daily prayer:

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,”

Everything we do or say starts in the mind and we must daily do battle there. We can only battle effectively when we are able to discern thoughts that are not of God, take them captive and then replace them with words of truth...God’s Word. We have got to be women of the Word! And, as we continue to fall in love with God and His Word, as we seek to obey Christ in a place where no one can see....the thoughts in our mind...we will find true joy, rest and victory! We’ll be able to echo a hearty agreement with Alan Redpath when he said:

"There is nothing, no circumstance, no trouble, no testing,
that can even touch me until, first of all,
it has gone past God and Christ, right through to me.
If it has come that far,
it has come with a great purpose
which I may not understand at the moment. 
But as I refuse to become panicky,
as I lift up my eyes to him and accept it
as coming from the throne of God
for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart,
no sorrow will ever disturb me,
no trial will ever disarm me,
no circumstance will cause me to fret,
for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is!
That is the rest of Victory!"

Comments

You are SO precious!!

I don't nearly hug you ENOUGH. ( I mean it!! )

I was so thankful to be able to be there and be ministered (and BLESSED!) by your talk this morning. I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed what you shared from your heart with all of us today! I seriously got a LOT out of it!!!!!!!

Thank you for being transparent with us; for being humble, honest and as your heart desired, leading us always back to God's word, His plan and for His glory.

Oh and did I mention you are SO precious?? ~hugs and LOTS of love~

Tracey
hmschlmomof4 said…
Kristin,

Thanks for speaking this morning. It was a real blessing. I especially appreciated the quote from Paul Tripp.
You also had a quote from Elizabeth Prentiss and the funny thing is that I had never heard of her before last night when I stumbled upon a free download of the audiobook of Stepping Heavenward. So I now have it on my computer ready to read and then this morning you mentioned the very same book in your talk. I think I'd better get reading it!
Here's the link for the free download in case someone else wants it: http://librivox.org/stepping-heavenward-by-e-prentiss/
Librivox has lots of free audiobook downloads of books that are in the public domain.

Lots of Love,
Natasha
Anonymous said…
Thanks for posting this for those of us who weren't able to make it on Saturday. You are a blessing!

Janet Lafleche