I love that God doesn’t leave us as we are but is always encouraging us to level up. I keep having these moments of inspiration and clarity, just peeks really, of what God wants for me and my family. What’s more is that I’m seeing snippets of the road to getting there. Kind of prophetic, right? Well, I’ve definitely not always been a big fan.
The area of prophecy always seemed very hocus-pocus to me. Like having your palm read (I actually did that once and it freaked me out), prophecy has always been the scary unknown in my mind. Scary. Unknown. The heebie-jeebies, am I right? But what makes it scary? Obviously, the demonic kind of fortune-telling is enough to freak me out, but that’s different from prophecy. So, what is it about prophecy that sets me on edge?
Prophecy isn’t simply about telling the future. It’s not about reading a palm or seeing reflections in a crystal ball or flipping scary looking cards over in a certain pattern with the thunder and lightning adding dramatic effects. Those are mere knockoffs. True prophesy is a message inspired by or directly from God and is described as a divine revelation. Fine, I can give you a definition, but that still doesn’t answer what that really means for us, right? And it doesn’t explain the scary.
I remember feeling very unsettled around certain people because they were known for being able to read your mail. It’s as though God would give them an inside look at the darkest areas that I was hoping no one would ever see – especially God. I know it makes no sense because God knows and sees all, but having someone shine a spotlight on those things that I was ashamed of scared me more than I really care to admit. I was convinced that I would be the subject of everyone’s gossip, that I would be shunned, or more simply put, that everyone would know I was wholly unworthy.
The topic of gossip, being shunned, and the state of being completely unworthy. Boy do those pack a punch!
Being very insecure in my… well, my everything… has taken its toll. And please know that I’m not fishing for compliments here. Just sharing with the world what has me shaking in a state of ridiculous insecurity. While I feel pretty confident in some of my abilities, there are other areas that I don’t even talk about. Take this blog for instance and my children’s book – most people who know me at church don’t even know I write and operate a blog or that I wrote a book! They know me as the mom of 5 who looks too young to be the grandma of 2. They really give me too much credit – they only see the kiddos on their 1 non-feral day of the week.
Insecurities can pop up anywhere and for a number of reasons. The roots are often labeled during childhood: overly critical parental figures, bullying, trauma, and abuse are just the tip of the iceberg. There might be environmental conditioning that slaps a label on a root, too. Most adults are walking around with no idea of the why for how they act and respond to the world around them. Many have even become so proficient in functioning in their dysfunction that they don’t even notice that they have damaged roots.
Some of what I’ve learned about myself in the more recent years is that not only do I have a great many insecurities due to some of the more common roots, but I also have what I want to call a rerigion insecurity. No, I didn’t spell that wrong. R-E-R-I-G-I-O-N. It’s a thing, but it shouldn’t be. I have suffered through this insecurity, this conviction that I can’t approach God and am too unworthy to hear God’s voice. How am I to hear or believe anything prophetic when I’m too unworthy to hear His voice? I’ve had a debilitating and unhealthy view of the character and nature of God for far too long.
When we were traveling through Vietnam and Thailand a few years ago, in one of the airport bookstores, there was a sign over a shelf of books that read Rerigion. There are plenty of jokes and spins on this that I’m not going to throw in there, but I have to admit that I laughed out loud and took a picture so I could show everyone I was traveling with. Remember the priest in The Princess Bride? Mawage. Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday. Mawage, that bwessed awangment, that dweam wifin a dweam… Oh, y’all, I was in stitches!
Rerigion. We see it and know that it’s wrong right away, but it seems pretty close. We might even question how it’s supposed to be spelled or pronounced. It’s just… wrong. Kind of like our faith. We might hear something that doesn’t sit right in our spirit regarding who God is presented as and taught to be, but are we bold enough to question it? Or, like me, do we hunker down in our insecurities?
I grew up hearing about God’s wrath for the unforgiven sin. I learned about the curses people had to look forward to for putting a toe out of line. I regularly heard that God only heals if it’s His will. But then I’m taught not just that God loves us, but that He is love. What kind of love is that? No wonder there are people in this world that don’t trust God! I also learned that I’m saved by grace through faith, but that I have to do things just right to be acceptable to Him. Um, hi, God… remember me…? I’m the insecure unworthy one?
There are so many Christians who accepted Jesus as their Savior, but then started the slow crawl to getting bogged down with the rigid traditions and became convinced that they needed to have some Old Covenant mixed in with the New. It makes sense that God would require them to follow a few rules, right? Before too long, they are part of a religion instead of a relationship. They’re in a mawage instead of a marriage. Without really noticing, the Old Covenant has so thoroughly been interwoven with the New that they no longer accept the Gospel as truth. They no longer recognize who God is or what He provided.
The religion I grew up with had me confused as to who God really is. Then I started to recognize the rerigion. I started to see the misspelled word for what it was. I had been convinced my entire life that God was someone He’s not at all. His actions, His motives, and even His love were twisted up and had gotten difficult to decipher. Of course I felt unworthy! It was natural that I fearfully cowered in shame and condemnation! But we first have to spot the mistake before we can go about correcting it.
God doesn’t have wrath for the unforgiven sin because all sin was forgiven at the cross for the whole world for all time (Colossians 2:13-14 & I John 2:2). Are we living in the Old Covenant do or be cursed or the New Covenant of Jesus did so you’re blessed (Genesis 12:2-3)? God doesn’t strike us with sicknesses or diseases, but rather He spent His ministry healing all who came to Him and claimed to be doing exactly as His Father does (Matthew 8:16-17 & John 5:19). And God is always pleased with us because He is always pleased with Jesus (II Corinthians 5:21).
God has not called me to operate in a state of fear of being gossiped about, shunned, or judged unworthy. His perfect love casts out those fears (I John 4:18), He’s given me power and a sound mind (II Timothy 1:7). I’m watching out for the religion vs rerigion vs His radical grace. Allow God to help you level up. Don’t settle for a mawage. Go for the real thing.