“Who would want to be discipled by a woman like me?”
That’s the boulder that sat directly on my chest as I let it sink in how badly I had messed up. After suppressing every sexual urge and desire from ages 19 – 31, I started dating and realised that when I locked away my desire for intimacy, it never matured. I was still a 19 year-old who hadn’t had any space or time to take all that knowledge in my brain and apply it to real-life situations. I was still a teenager who knew all the right answers but was easily persuaded to cross boundaries I had set for myself because of a deep longing to be loved and desired I hadn’t addressed.
What made the situation harder for me is that I am in full-time ministry. I preach in front of congregations. I have prayed alongside countless women as Jesus shapes their sexuality to align with His heart. And I was embarrassed. I was afraid.
I was afraid that people would be disillusioned with Jesus because they were disillusioned with me. I’ve watched as church leaders repent and confess sin and then lose everything while the people who trusted them are shaken to their depths because their leader made the wrong choices.
It came down to this question: Will I lose everything I’ve built?
And from that question, my heart was gently directed to see that even as a person who shares the Gospel of Jesus for a living, there was a Tower of Babel being raised in my heart, making myself the focus of what I was doing, rather than pointing to what Jesus has already done.
In a world that has become so focused on turning lives and people into “brands” that can be marketed and monetized, our foundations of identity and value risk being built on measurable data about whether or not we have the approval and buy-in of people we may never even interact with.
The reality is that maybe what we’ve built NEEDS to be torn down. Maybe what we’ve built is exactly that: a foundation that appeals to the world and everyone in it holding up a highlight reel of only the things that point to us being worth the attention of others. If we examine whose approval we are seeking and where we are finding value, we might find that what we’ve been thinking is the grace and love of Christ has actually shifted to performance, followers, reputation and “brand.”
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the wind blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
[Matthew 7:24-27]
Now, we want to pursue holiness with our whole hearts and encourage others to do that as well, but that is not to receive justification or pay back the debt Jesus already covered. We cannot pay Him back. We will ALWAYS need His sacrifice to cover you. We never need Him less. I will never need Him any less. You will never need Him any less.
The reality is that none of us DESERVE the ministry God lets us take part in. What we deserve is death and condemnation because of how quickly we forget this is about glorifying the person Jesus and we choose to do things our own way and make it about glorifying ourselves. The fact that we have been given the opportunity to participate in Kingdom work at all is a gift and an invitation from the One who has given us an unchanging, incalculable value and identity in Christ.
The Good News that we preach is that everything hinges on Jesus getting it exactly, perfectly right, not us getting it exactly, perfectly right. We do not spur one another on in order to make them LOOK righteous…We walk side-by-side, seeking the Spirit’s guidance and clinging to the Cross as the only hope to pay for our sins so we can rest in a relationship with God, and secured Life in Him.
