The Crucible

Crucible. That's the word the Lord kept putting before my spiritual eyes. As I faced one heartache after another this year, He kept whispering "crucible". When I asked why I had to go through the pain and pressure, He kept repeating, "crucible".

A physical crucible is defined as, "a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures." A crucible is used to refine metals, such as gold.

John Bevere, in his book The Bait of Satan, describes the difference in gold before and after it is refined:

"Refined gold is soft and pliable, free from corrosion or other substances. It is when gold is mixed with other metals that it becomes hard, less pliable, and more corrosive. This mixture is called an alloy. The higher the percentage of foreign metals, the harder the gold becomes. Conversely, the lower the percentage of alloy, the softer and more flexible."

He goes on to add:

"First step in refining gold is grinding it into a powder and mixing it with a substance called flux. Then the mixture is placed in a furnace and melted by intense heat. The alloys and impurities are drawn to the flux and rise to the surface. The gold (which is heavier) remains at the bottom. The impurities or dross (such as copper, iron, and zinc, combined with flux) is then removed, yielding a purer metal."

Now it makes sense why the Lord kept putting this word in my heart.

Every trial. Every difficulty. Every day spent crying. Every night spent wide awake with worry. I get it now. All those bad things that I "didn't deserve" were just extra degrees added to the refiner's fire.

When gold is heated, all the impurities come to the surface. So it is with trials. Under pressure, we see what's really on the inside. The Bible tells us that what comes out of our mouths originates from our hearts. When things are going well, we can suppress the ugly parts of us. But when we struggle, are anxious or just plain mad, we find ourselves verbalizing what we didn't even know was there.

Now confronted with all my issues glaring at me from the surface, I had to choose: stuff them back down and pretend I didn't know better, or let God complete the process He intended when He put me in the heat. I chose the latter. I asked for His help and then I set out to ask for forgiveness from those I had wronged in my "alloy days".

The result was spectacular. God restored and enriched relationships I thought would be lost in the midst of the fire. He gave me more clarity on His Will for my life. He gave me peace that comes from knowing the crucible is a gift and not a punishment.

Gold has to be refined so it can be pliable. It has to be pliable so it can be shaped and formed into something beautiful.

Don't despise the crucible. Pray for understanding in the struggle and for the strength to let God do the work He desires in you.

Waves on the Altar

The Prophet Elijah announced that it would neither rain nor dew except upon his command in response to King Ahab leading the people of Israel to worship their weather god, Baal. God immediately sends his prophet away, where he is provided for in the 3 years that followed. Then the Word of the Lord came and sent Elijah back to the King.

Elijah called on the King to gather his prophets for a challenge. It would come down to Elijah against 450 prophets of Baal. Each side was to prepare an altar with a cut sacrifice atop the wood, but they could not light it. The God who answered with fire would be pronounced the true God.

Baal's prophets prayed and danced and even cut themselves to gain their god's attention, but nothing worked. Now it was Elijah's turn.

First, he repaired the Lord's altar. He got his foundation right.

Then, he built a trench around his altar and arranged the sacrifice as he saw fit.

His next move makes no sense. He commands that barrels of water be poured over the wood. So much water was used that it saturated the wood and the remainder filled the trench.

Why in the world would he do that? Most people know you need dry wood to start a fire.

He was setting God up for His due glory. Elijah was putting his side in a situation in which there would be no doubt that his God reigned supreme. No one would be able to accuse Elijah of trickery or try to give him the credit.

When I think about the water being poured out, my mind goes to the ocean. You reach a certain point in the water where the waves come very close together. If one gets you off balance, it's nearly impossible to regain control before the next one comes. You can get to the point where you think you'll never get out of the sinking sand beneath you.

Life's like that sometimes. Wave after wave crash over you, and you wonder if you'll ever regain your footing. Your health takes a hit, and about the time you straighten up, your finances are in trouble. You get your money right, and your relationships start to suffer. You may even pray and ask God to just give you a break. He doesn't have to make everything perfect, but if he could just hold a wave back long enough to catch your breath and get your head above water you'd at least feel like He heard you.

I know I've prayed that. One day the Lord explained it so plainly that even I could understand. He said, "I'm capable of holding the wave back with my hand, but I'm setting this up for my Glory."

The goal on the other side of trial isn't that people marvel at our strength, it's that they see how big our God is. He will let us take those hits so that on the other side we don't try to share in His Glory.

The outcome of Elijah's drenched altar and power packed prayer was that fire fell from heaven and the people turned back to Yahweh.

How differently would we view hardship if we started seeing it as an opportunity to put God's Glory on display?

The Arms of a Princess

The times into which Moses was born would have been terrifying for any Israelite mother. In an effort to halt the numerical growth of God's people, the King of Egypt ordered all Hebrew baby boys be murdered. Exodus 2 gives the account of his mother's bravery:

Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

“Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

As a parent, I don’t believe anyone could love my son like I do. There’s no place safer for him, in my mind, than by my side. Most parents feel that way. Parents have this gift from God to see their kid’s potential more than their problems. So we worry when we send him out into the world that doesn’t readily have the ability to see their strengths.

But even with all this unimaginable love I have for my son, I’m not perfect. I’ve failed him. Sometimes my love for him makes me act a little crazy. Sometimes I react out of tiredness or frustration. Sometimes I don’t say things the way I should and I know I don’t always make the right decisions for him.

I’ve come to realize what Moses’s mother found out: my hands aren’t the safest place for him, God’s hands are the safest place for him. This is the God of whom David would write:

You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body;  all the days ordained for me were written in Your Book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are Your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with You.

That’s the God Moses’s mother was trusting in. She was trusting in the God who formed and loved her son to protect him. And that’s the same God we have to trust in when we send our babies out into this world of suffering.

The mother did 3 things that I want to highlight and learn from as a parent:

1) She trusted what she had built

The tar and pitch the mother used was the same waterproofing method used on large boats. She was resourceful. The most ideal situation was that he could stay safe with her, but if she had to let him go she gave him the best security and she had faith in this method before she put her baby into the basket.

When the time comes to send our children out, we have to trust in the foundations we have set in them. The Word of God never returns void. Even when you think they aren’t listening. Even when it doesn’t seem to land, keep speaking and praying God’s Word over them because it’s full of power that our own words will never possess.

              2) She released him

It would seem like this mother was taking a pretty huge gamble by placing her baby in the water. But she knew something we forget, with God on our side, it’s never a gamble. 

I believe when she placed the boy into the bank, God’s hand covered him. He wasn’t found by soldiers or Egyptians who were scared to violate the king’s command, nor was he eaten by a wild animal. Why? Because Moses was covered by the hand that had his name engraved upon it. The same hand that has my son's name engraved on it. The same hand that has your child’s name engraved on it.

Yes, God entrusts our children to us. Ours is the hand they get to hold, but we have to place them back into the hand of their Creator. Releasing our children is hard. Whether you drop your child or grandchild off for the first day of elementary, middle, high school, or at a college dorm, God goes before them and He walks beside them. And He has loved them in a way even you couldn’t imagine. He doesn't make mistakes, nor does He respond out of frustration or exhaustion. That's just part of why His ways are higher than ours. 

Moses was kept by the hand of God until he was welcomed into the arms of a princess. God has plans for your children beyond your wildest dreams, but you have to trust him.

              3) When given the opportunity, she took him back in

Moses’ mother didn’t place her baby in the water because she didn’t love him, she did it  out of great love. She knew that keeping him meant certain death, but releasing him at least gave him the opportunity for life. God entrusted Moses to this woman, she placed her trust back in God, and he gave her another opportunity to love and care for Moses. 

How you say goodbye has a lot to do with how often you will say hello to your children. I’ve often said a parent has 18 years to develop the kind of relationship that makes a child want to be around them after they reach that milestone. When God creates opportunity to love and care for them, take it. I believe Moses’s mother exemplified a command we parents would do well to memorize from the Apostle Paul:

1 Corinthians 16:13-14 "Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.  Do everything in love." 

It's easy to forget that transitions are hard for our children as well. Especially those into adulthood. Mistakes will be made. Fear will manifest as anger and annoyance (probably on both sides), but work to make sure all you do is done in love. 

Timelines

At 19 years old I knew exactly what needed to happen with my life. I had a perfect timeline of events that needed to occur when I said so in order for my life to be a "success". I'd have my Bachelor's Degree by 22, an engagement ring by 23, a perfect wedding by 24, all so I could have my two kids by 30 (I wasn't sure that I wanted children, but if I had them there was no way I'd be pregnant in my 30's).

Not only did I have a mental picture of how it would all go, but I set to planning ahead so when the time came I'd be ready. I spent hundreds of dollars if not more on wedding magazines, fully prepared to just change out the groom in my fantasy because he was just a piece of a much bigger puzzle.

But 22 came and the degree was delayed. 23 came and went with my ring finger remaining naked. So did 24, 25, and 26. My timeline was in shambles. In retrospect it was ridiculous to act as if I was an "old maid" at 26, but it felt like it at the time.

The Lord took me to Acts 17, featuring a speech by the Apostle Paul who was deeply troubled by all the idol worship in Athens. At verse 22 Paul begins;


 “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.'"

An unknown god. That's what I was worshiping. I had built an altar out of those magazines which was fanned with my crazed fantasies turned obsessions. I was putting all my faith on a future I couldn't understand instead of turning to the God who was already there. This God dictates the boundaries of lands and APPOINTS TIMES IN HISTORY, and yet I thought the appointments I set on an invisible calendar were going to win.

So here's what I did-

I gave the magazines away to a friend who was recently engaged and could actually use them. I started working on me in the present instead of the imagined "me" from the future. I confronted my insecurities and started doing something about them. I studied without worrying about the degree. I took an interest in getting healthy. I actively worked to get closer to the known God I had neglected while chasing the one I didn't know.

And while I was focused on getting those things right, God sent a man who loved me just as I was.

I still only have my associate's degree. I got married at 27, had my first child at 28, and don't know if he will be the only one (but if he's not, I'll be pregnant in my 30's).

The problem with timelines is that we are subject to a God who is all knowing and all seeing. He saw that I wasn't ready in my early 20's for the things I thought I needed. What I needed was to find myself in Him first.

In the waiting, seek God's Will. Ask Him what it is He desires to do you in you. Submit to the process and find joy in the timelines that he wrecks.

Stand On Me

I believe women in ministry are at a pivotal point in history. Both within my own movement and outside, women are receiving recognition for their contribution to the Gospel moving forward, while organizations once closed off to women are taking a new look at their stance. I receive messages constantly from young women searching for guidance as they accept the Call to preach, and I can't help but notice a special outpouring. 

Something is happening in His daughters, and something amazing is about to come through them.

This blog is not being written to pat us on the back or bring attention. Instead, it's a plea that we not mess this up. 

Too often in the world of women in ministry there is undue competition. Of course, there is competition in both sexes, but there's this idea that there are only so many spots for females, and thus, if you've got one you better fight to keep it. 

And I do mean FIGHT.

Instead of embracing the sisterhood of this calling, we turn on one another. We like the idea of God calling young women, but we want them to wait on the edge of the stage watching us, waiting until we are done with the spotlight. I've watched it play out over and over again, as anointed women stoop so low as to gossip, lie, and even sabotage those they consider a threat. 

So I say to those of us already on the battlefield, we have a sacred duty to encourage our new soldiers. We should be their biggest supporters, because no one understands the struggle like we do. And if we should ever be tempted to keep them on the sidelines, I pray another sister would rise up and correct us. 

I pray a prayer over the young women I mentor that they would take the Gospel farther, faster than I ever dreamed. Do you know how that will be possible? By letting them stand on my shoulders. And what does shoulder standing entail? It's me, being vulnerable, telling them all the missteps and pitfalls to watch out for. It's time spent together in the Word. It's consciously taking the conversation from gossip to prayer. It's teaching them how to be true to their calling without compromising their equally important callings at home. It's deciding the goal is God's glory and not my own. 

How can they assume that position atop my shoulders if I'm constantly stepping on them trying to get to my next pedestal? 

I want the testimony of my generation of called women to be that we were gracious to one another. I want it to be said that we lived lives worthy of emulation by the girls behind us. The work is too important to be petty. 

What exactly is He about to do? I'm not sure. But buckle up, buttercup. This is going to be an amazing ride. 

Leaving the Upper Room

I am tremendously thankful for my Pentecostal heritage. Growing up in a church AND home in which the gifts of the Spirit were proven over and over, I've never doubted the authenticity of the baptism. I've seen the much discussed physical manifestations when "the Spirit moves". I've witnessed words of prophecy and knowledge spoken which the speaker could not have known without some intervention from God. In short, you've come too late to convince me that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was limited to the New Testament.

But I fear a trend among us.

I remember services growing up when people would say things like, "the Spirit moved so much that the preacher didn't even preach!" I understood the sentiment, at times I even thought never hearing a sermon again because we were so enthralled in worship was a great goal. 

And then I read the book of Acts in its entirety.

Pentecostals tend to want to camp out in the first few verses of Acts 2. Why wouldn't we love to stay there? These verses are for all intents and purposes the foundation of the Pentecostal arm of the Church. Here we read of the visible and audible power of God sweeping a prayer meeting and filling the attendees with power, fulfilling the promise of Jesus and the prophecies which had awaited fulfillment.

But the purpose of Pentecost isn't found in the first four verses of Acts 2, it's found in the remainder of the book. They weren't endued with power so they could recount a great event. Tongues of fire didn't rest on them so they could feel good about themselves. The Spirit was poured out on them because they were about to embark on a seemingly impossible journey. They were charged with advancing the Gospel in the face of persecution, discrimination, and the physical loss of their Teacher.

The Upper Room outpouring didn't come so they could say they "had church", it came so they could BE the Church.

The effects of what happened on that day are too great to recount, but a quick scan of the remainder of Acts reveals cowards becoming leaders, the Church growing by thousands at a time, signs and wonders, church planting, and the advancement of the Gospel far beyond the borders they had known.

When we chose to focus on the outpouring in the church instead of the "out flowing" to a lost world, we do what Peter suggested in Matthew 17.

Jesus had taken Peter, James, and John up a mountain and revealed Himself to them. They saw Jesus transform before their eyes before seeing Moses and Elijah as well.

In verse 4 Peter says, "Lord, it is good for us to be here: if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias."

Note: it's good for us.

For us, in this moment, everything is great, so let's stay here. But in the shadow of that mountain was a boy who needed help. A spirit was putting the boy's safety at risk and the disciples couldn't contend with it. The boy needed Jesus.

What if the Lord had allowed Peter to build a camp for Him on the mountain? What would have happened to the boy who desperately needed him?

How would things have been different if those gathered in the Upper Room had decided they would rather stay in the warm glow of the tongues of fire than go outside?

See, suddenly filled with this Holy Spirit in Acts, Peter isn't concerned about "us" anymore. It's not about camping out in comfort now. It's not about basking in the glow of the presence of Jesus. Now he's more driven to go than to stand in the glow. Acts is the story of the Church, and what we find in the New Testament is that the Church is about we over me.

This is why I worry when I hear about churches that get so caught up in the outpouring that there is never an out flow. It's nice to be in a service where we "feel the Spirit", but we weren't baptized for that. We were baptized to be His witnesses. We were filled to walk in boldness and take Jesus to the people who have no intention of attending our services-no matter how awesome they are.

At some point, we have to leave the "Upper Room", and what will we do then?

My problem isn't with worship or the "song service" part of our time together, far from it. I'm the person you really don't want to stand next to during the "praise and worship" portion of a service because I can't contain my excitement over singing praises to my God. My problem is when we decide to worship worship. When we decide that time spent worshiping through music is more important than any other form of worship, we elevate it to a dangerous status. Our worship becomes self-indulgent and more focused on emotion than truth.

When we applaud the lack of preaching because we sang too long, there's a problem. When we leave a service without hearing any Biblical truth because we not only shut out the sermon but the songs we sing lack any scriptural foundation (which can happen with both modern songs and hymns), there's a problem. When we think our time together is about us and not the world we are supposed to be taking the Gospel to, there's a big problem.

When you leave the "Upper Room" of your church environment is anyone outside better for the time you spent there? Are you satisfied to be "shook" in God's Presence, or do you leave and shake up your community? We aren't filled to feel full. We are filled to be fueled for the mission at hand-to take the Gospel to the world.