Start Here.

On dead ends and the Door.

Eleven years ago, I found myself in the cliché crying-on-my-kitchen-floor position, wondering how a "good Christian girl" like me could find herself in my kind of circumstances. The details are unimportant and would bless no one. But the Cliff Notes version is this:

My marriage was a mess.¹

I was battling a decade of oppression by satan's favorite ferocious defenders: fear and anxiety.²

And I was more alone than ever.³

Ironically, I devoured as much Christian content as possible and led a handful of women in a Bible study at my house. Externally, I had it all together. But inside, I was frustrated that everything I read and shared with others wasn't translating into the place it mattered most: my actual life.

Spoiler alert: Turns out, knowing a bunch of information about God does not equal transformation. 

That night on the kitchen floor, I realized I was not at a proverbial crossroads - where I either go this way or that. The truth is, no way was working. The "way" of more books, more Bible verses, more leading groups, and more praying made everything way worse. Instead, I was at a dead end. And I was searching for a door.

So I did what I do best when desperate for someone to tell me what to do: I picked up a book.

The book was called An Altar in the World, and I don't really remember much about it, except there was one line in the opening chapter that jumped off the page and into my darkness. I remember reading the words, underlining them multiple times with a pink highlighter, closing the book, and asking Jesus to show me how to live in the reality of the words:

"Not more about God. More God."

Right there, a light turned on in my heart, and the first of many a-ha moments to come washed over me. Over time, with the help of friends, mentors, and a counselor named Debbie (thank you, Jesus for Debbie), I began to understand how all the "ways" I was attempting to live were an unconscious attempt to use "Christian-y" activity to escape pain. Or "using God to run from God," as Pete Scazzero puts it in his book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality⁴. Instead of facing my circumstances and fears, I avoided them because I was petrified of what big bad wolves might be hiding beneath them. To top it off, I blamed my 5-book-deep nightstand by best-selling Christian authors for not fixing me.

It wasn't that the books I was reading weren't practical or helpful. Hello! I'm creating Christian content. But I know I am not alone in using them (unknowingly) as an end in themselves and then wondering why things are still the way they are.

I've learned the hard way that we can't ride on the flame of someone else's insights, no matter how anointed they are.

I once heard my favorite Bible teacher, Beth Moore, tell a story about a woman who told her she did her Breaking Free Bible study 3 times. However, she still wasn't "free" and desperate to know why. Beth told the story to make this point: 

We have to take responsibility for our own spiritual growth. We cannot rely on best-selling authors, our favorite Bible teachers, prophets, or podcasters to do it for us. You and I have to do the work of being honest with ourselves, God, and the people in our lives. All of those things are meant to facilitate an atmosphere for us to build a deep relationship with God. Not BE our relationship with God.

I often wonder if some of us don't know how to take responsibility for our faith because we don't believe "more God" is for us. Many of the friends and women I talk to tell me they have no idea where to start. "The Bible is intimidating," they say. "I don't know what or how to read it." Some don't think God will speak to them. As one twenty-something told me at a retreat, “If he does speak to me, it's probably not going to be good."

What hits the hardest is how a majority of those I have talked with over the years tell me they struggle to maintain any kind of transformative, consistent relationship with God that sticks around for more than 40 days of prayer or a 30-day challenge, if they even make it that long. This is not the way we were made, dear reader. So what do we do instead? I know because I've done it.

We settle for a half-realized, therapeutic version of Christianity that helps us cope with our lives and manage our behavior. This kind of faith is principled but without power. It informs, but it doesn't transform. It looks good on a sticky note or Instagram post, but it's not translating into our actual lives. And when we get right down to it, we want more. We want to encounter more. We want to encounter Jesus. All of that other stuff, apart from the Living Word Himself, can be rocked, socked, and deconstructed. But an encounter with Jesus is different. It changes your heart before it changes your mind and propels you forward in full assurance before you know all the answers. It's messy and beautiful because it's real.⁵

This brings me back to what happened after that night with the book.

Those six words: "Not more about God. More God," sent me on a journey deep into the thin pages of red letter words, perplexing statements, and storm-stilling stories. I encountered Jesus. The God-Man. The Person. The Word and his words. In more than a felt-board-at -Sunday school kind of way, but on the canvas of my own story and experiences. The depth, beauty, and mystery in those stories met me in my own and gave me a new way to live, move and have my being.⁶

I realized how despite being raised in the Church, I never spent much time on the Person, words, and teachings of Jesus. Why was that? There was something familiar about the stories in the gospels. "I already know that," I thought. “What do those things have to do with my never-ending anxiety, marriage meltdown, and loneliness? Isn't that stuff just for when we die?” But I soon learned this was a transactional approach to the Man from Nazareth. And Jesus wasn't transactional. He was transformational. He was then. And he is today.

As I read the gospels, I continued to be struck by the encounters Jesus shared with people like you and me. People in the midst of swirling fear, shame, uncertainty, half a mustard seed of faith, and wondering when things would change. No amount of synagogue meetings or Sabbath-keeping brought them the transformation they were desperate for.

Only an encounter with Jesus did that.

I began to see that Jesus, The Word, and His words were living, eternal, and the very essence of truth. No book, Bible study, or devotional can claim or be that. No teacher can claim that or be that. Only He does and is.

Selah. 

This is why I am passionate about helping you open the scriptures and encounter Jesus at your own dead end. Why? So you can live the life Jesus paid for - not one day in the future but right here, right now. And it’s not just personal. It never can be. Our world is desperate for disciples of Jesus who offer the world around them an encounter with the Living God.

Jesus holds the words of life, and we don't have to be afraid to let him into our own. 

As we do, He reveals the "more" we all long for is a longing for Himself.

He is the more that we could ever ask for or imagine.

He is the Door at our dead ends.

He was, is, and always will be.

1. I might share more about our marriage story another time. But I am well acquainted with shame, addiction, control and the brokenness it causes. If you’re in a tough spot, know healing is possible.

2. Another story for another time. For now, I’m here to shout in my best cheerleader mega-phone voice that if you’re in the ring with these two, they will try their darnedest to knock you out, stomp on your chest, and hope you never know the truth of the Love that comes to set you free. Look up, ask for help, and do not battle them alone.

3. Isolation is the goal of shame and all of his friends. Tell your stuff to someone you can trust. Get help. It’s ok to not be ok.

4. Funny story: I was asked to join a friend in going through it with a mentor in 2012 and I remember thinking how I didn’t really need it. “Oh, I will do this for her!” I thought. LOL. It changed my life. Thanks, Pete.

5. This is therapeutic Christianity. It is principals without power. And while it is part of the story it is not the whole story. “The flesh counts for nothing,” said Jesus. “It is the Spirit that gives life. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”

6. Acts 17:28