Out of the Valley

FACT:  The devil will never present himself to you in the form that you expect.  John 10:10 (NIV) tells us that, “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”.  His purpose is stated clearly – to steal, kill and destroy.  He’s referred to as “the thief” and we all know that every good thief wears a mask.

Our problem is that we watch too much TV. We expect the presence of the devil to be obvious and assume that we’ll be able to see what he has stolen from us, but it’s never that simple.

The devil attacks the building blocks of our future. He steals our hope; kills our dreams; and destroys our faith. If you’re staying close to God and stretching toward your purpose in this life, how can you know when the devil has stolen hope from you?  How will you know that your dreams are slipping away before they’re completely outside of your sight?

While we’re keeping an eye out for something as obvious as a red-skinned demon with horns and a pitch fork, he’s attacking us subtly in places we find comfort.  He comes wearing strong arms and broad shoulders. Buried in the voice of the man who, “just wants to spend time with you” but that [insert dream] takes up all of your time.  If you’re lazing on the couch watching a movie, he’s fine to lay next to you, but pick up a pencil and start writing music, or a paint brush that you haven’t touched in weeks, and suddenly…you’re focused on your dream to the detriment of your relationship.

He comes in the voice of your mother when she asks, “why can’t you just get a regular job?  You’re trying too hard to make [insert dream] happen and nobody has ever even done that before”. You start to wonder if you can truly be the first.

He comes as a best friend when they say, “why are you writing a book?  People don’t even read their emails!”  Or when they quote all the negative statistics of small businesses because they “don’t want to see you get hurt”, when the reality is that they don’t have enough faith to support you in your vision and you didn’t have enough wisdom to keep that vision to yourself until you could stomach the backlash of disbelief.

These are the sneaky ways in which the devil comes to you.  Yet, most often, he comes wearing the same mask that you see when you brush your teeth in the morning.  That version of you that smiles wryly to cover the blotches on your skin that have come from the “comfort” of your own doubts, fears, and insecurities.  The same doubts, fears and insecurities that have suppressed your dreams into dormancy.

I learned two very important things last week. While writing last week’s #WednesdayReveal “The Joy of Becoming”, I learned that (to some extent) we control our time in the valley.  If I had cast aside my doubts, fears and leaned not unto my own understanding, perhaps my tears would have dried sooner, clearing my vision enough for me to head in the direction of my mountain.  I wouldn’t have reached it until God knew I was ready, but at least I would’ve been on the right path.

The other thing that I learned is that no dream belongs solely to the dreamer.  I have a dream for this ministry to bless the world, and I believe God for that to happen within His time and design, so selfishly, I’ve kept my dream close to me.  Yet, after allowing a friend to read some of my work, she said to me that HER dream is to live long enough to see me “sit across from Oprah on Super Soul Sunday” … a show that I don’t even watch!

Ephesians 3:20 (NKJV) says God is able to do “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works IN US”.  I would have never asked God to bless me to be on a show that I can’t watch because it airs during our church service.  There would be no way to ask it because there would be no way for me to think it.

But check this out, it says above all that…according to the power that works WITHIN US.  We have far more power than we give ourselves credit for.  I could have potentially come out of my storm earlier had I realized that my dream isn’t just for me.  It’s not just for the wholeness of my children and grandchildren. It’s for the healing of their brokenness, for their dreams and their children’s dreams, and for the benefit of all those around us whose dreams are reliant on us tapping into our own power.

I’m sure that I’m not the only person who has been caught paraphrasing Isaiah 6:8, being the first to say, “send me Lord, I’ll go!” It wasn’t until the valley of these last 15 months that I truly realized what it means to go first.  My dream is for me, my family, my friends, and any woman who will be touched by my work and comes to the understanding that she can do anything, and go anywhere that she and God are in agreement that she should go!  It doesn’t matter if no one has ever done this thing the way that I seek to do it, because no one else has the same power that works within me.  No one has been given the same dream, to fulfill the same purpose that God has for me on this earth.  So tell me something…

if you knew that there was a nation of people tied to your dream, would you allow the tricks of the devil to keep you stuck? Or would you embrace the promises of God and come out of the valley?

Follow Me as I Follow God

@RevealingRuth

The Joy of Becoming

Fifteen months ago an unexpected acquisition caused me to leave the longest standing position of my professional life.  For months I had felt uncomfortable with work.  For weeks a friend had asked me what I was going to do about it. Was I applying for jobs? Was I going to quit?  What does uncomfortable mean exactly?  I had no answers. All I knew was that however one could come to explain my discomfort or uneasiness, it couldn’t be attributed to me being spiritually out of alignment.

I was still active in my prayer life, seeking daily to clearly hear the voice of God, and although constantly uncomfortable, the only time that I felt out of alignment was when I went to apply for a job. I just didn’t feel like applying for a job was what God wanted me to do.

So, I did the thing that is often most difficult for Christians – I remained still.  I promised God that I wouldn’t move unless He told me to, and He kept me in that season of uneasiness for about 3 months. Who would’ve guessed that a year later, I would be desperately praying for that lost season of discomfort.

I spent 11 of those 15 months unemployed; at least 7 of which without a single check coming in. I didn’t even qualify for unemployment.  At one point, I was very actively tracking and had applied for 67 jobs within ~ 6 weeks with NOT A SINGLE OFFER!  Here I was with 9 degrees, hadn’t been unemployed since I was 11 years old, and God wouldn’t give me a job no matter how much I begged him!

I have never felt so forgotten in my life.

I reached a point where I was crying in the shower nearly every time I turned the water on, pleading with God to tell me why He was so mad at me.  Asking God, how did I get here when I did everything that you told me to do?

I was in the valley, and I watered it daily.  Then, I decided to stop.  I decided that instead of crying over something that God wasn’t doing, that I would praise Him for everything that He was doing. I can honestly say that despite scripture, teaching and everything else, it was very hard to find things to be grateful for in the beginning. So, I started small - thank you Lord that even though I didn’t get a job offer today, at least I didn’t get a rejection! I thanked him for our home, for no car note, and being able to feed my daughter.  I got back to daily mediation and thanked Him for that, because it was not until then, that I realized what was happening.

I HAD FORGOTTEN.

You’ll notice that I speak a lot about process, and that’s because I feel like we don’t give process enough credit.  As people, we focus on the sunshine vs. the rain.  As Christians, we focus on the mountaintop vs. the valley. We forget that just as there is always a place, there is also a process.

When life hits us, we lean on common scriptures like Deuteronomy 31:8(NIV), “the Lord himself goes before you and be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged”.  We quote these scriptures and people recite them to us in hopes of providing comfort, but those scriptures alone are not comforting.

When I stopped crying, I figured out that none of us lands on a mountaintop or in a valley.  There is a PROCESS attached to every PLACE. In order to get to the valley, you must descend from the mountaintop. In order to reach the mountaintop, you have to climb the mountain.

The discomfort that I felt before leaving my job was my descent. I was headed for a very necessary valley.  The valley within which I cried often, unsure how I would care for my daughter. We know that Matthew 6:26 says birds “do not store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them”, but when bills keep coming instead of checks, or you start to see the back of your refrigerator…. does that scripture feel real to you?

I know that we are taught that we reap what we sow, and that I had always tried to sow love, grace and good works.  Unfortunately, when you’re in the storm, you can’t see any of that, because this isn’t a movie, it’s real life, and climbing a mountain is hard!

I cried in my valley wondering how long the storm would last, not realizing that my tears added to the flood.  When I stopped watering it, I stopped sinking.  I realized that if God wouldn’t pull me out, that I was okay if He would just join me.  I couldn’t sit in that valley alone.  Instead of dwelling on how I got there, I invited God to get down in there with me.  My resume wasn’t helping me.  My degrees weren’t helping me.  The prayers of my family weren’t helping me.  I had to shift my focus.

Some of us need to learn to pray – ‘Lord, if you won’t deliver me, join me. Be with me where I am and show me the way out’. The Bible says that the Lord goes before us, but He cannot go before us unless we first invite Him to be with us. He can only lead us out, if we give Him our hand.

When I invited God to sit with me in my valley, He showed me that of those 67 jobs that I’d applied for in that 6 weeks, I was only actually interested in 11; and of that 11, at least 4 would have required so much of me that I would hardly ever see my daughter.  That’s why we need logic in the valley, why we need God and wisdom in the valley.  Why we need clear vision.   If you spend enough time crying in the valley, you’ll blur your vision enough to think that the nearest mountain is yours to climb.  I accepted 2 positions in that first year of unemployment and neither of them was my mountain.

90% of those jobs I’d applied for would’ve caused me more harm than good.  That’s why God wouldn’t give them to me.  I was in my valley. I recognized that, but I had to stop crying in order to see MY mountaintop.  I had to stop focusing on how unhappy I was, in order to get to the joy of becoming who I want to be.

Follow Me as I Follow God

@RevealingRuth

Make a Good Wife

How many times have you questioned whether you'd make a good wife?

I have literally witnessed a young woman pray for a good, pure-hearted, Christian husband, and later overheard the same woman asking her boyfriend if he would use a toy on her...she didn't understand why they broke up!!

Understand this - NO ONE changes on their wedding day!!  That's not how wedding days work. Wearing a white dress won't make you pure. You cannot marry potential. We marry people, and God will not damn one in the blessing of the other.

A few months ago, my best friend’s family relocated. Visiting her new home for the first time, we got into a conversation about preparation. 

In recent years, I have purchased a home believed to be my dream home, where I am not always completely comfortable. I met a man who met nearly every item on my list of desirables, and we never even made it to our first date. 

When considering what it is that we want in a mate, we always think about the desirables, we never truly consider what we don’t want. Moreover, we never give consideration to what makes us (un)desirable. We consider what they bring to the table, but have no regard for what we offer...or lack.  How often do we truly evaluate ourselves? 

That young woman asked for all the things that she felt that she was supposed to ask for in the presence of "church folk", knowing full well that she was not ready to receive what she gave request of.  Judging from the fact that they broke up after her question, she also clearly lacked some understanding of the man that she was spending her time with.  This may seem like an extreme example, but a real one nonetheless.

We have got to start considering what our thoughts, desires and petitions to God could do to others. I was speaking to my daughter today about how unfair it is for someone to commit suicide by walking into traffic.  It is among the most selfish things that you can do, to take your own life and the future of a complete stranger.  Even if that person doesn't go to jail for killing you, they have to spend the rest of their lives tortured by your death. 

Along similar lines, what do you think happens to people who marry someone based on the person they thought they knew? 

When a woman considers a future with a man, whether she writes it down or not, she lists what she loves/hates, likes/dislikes about her mate to determine if she would say yes, should he ever ask her to marry him. Yet the bible says to examine yourself, not everyone else. 

Deuteronomy 4:9 (NKJV) says that you should, “only take heed to yourself, and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren”.  How can you teach something to future generations that you don’t actually know? 

The entire premise of what is to be the Revealing Ruth movement is founded on wisdom and self-awareness before we can even get to love. The embodiment of this woman, at the center of the bible’s greatest love story, is knowledge of self and the actualization of purpose. 

The bible holds no record of Ruth ever questioning whether or not Mahlon or even Boaz would make a good husband. Instead, she focused on heeding the word of the Lord and wise counsel (Naomi) in ensuring that she was properly aligned in doing the Lord’s work. 

My friend says that I am in a season of preparation, and I welcome that with open arms, because the very last thing that I would ever want to do is to spend the rest of my life torturing the man whom God has sent forth to love and honor me, because I never considered my shortcomings as his wife.

In order to receive God's best, you have to be trying your best.

The Lord will not send you a Godly, upright Christian man, working in The Kingdom, walking in his purpose and wanting to love you as his own flesh, if your brokenness will:

     - Make you mean-spirited and distrustful 

     - Cause you to act out in perversion

     - Compromise his wholeness because you spend all of your time together making him pay for the mistakes of your past, or just 

     - Ruin what would've been the greatest blessing of your life because you were allowed to lay hold of it before you were ready

Each of us present in The Body of Christ have an assignment specific to us that no other soul has the wherewithal to carry out.  In order for God’s Plan to be successfully executed to our own greatness and His glory, we have to turn our gaze from without, to within. 

There is no way for you to know if a man is your husband except for God telling you that it is so, and the only way for you to actually hear God when He speaks, is to cleanse your senses with the living water of God’s Word.  2 Corinthians 13:5 (NIV), says “EXAMINE YOURSELVES to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves.” 

So the next time you're home alone going through lifes' shoulda, coulda, wouldas, or you're on a date and wondering if that guy would make a good husband, ask yourself this question instead

COULD I, WOULD I...MAKE A GOOD WIFE?

The inner healing work necessary to finding this questions' answer will be what dictates how long you wait for that soul mate you so desperately seek to find.

Follow Me as I Follow God

@RevealingRuth