Jana Spicka and Women Getting Real Ministries
Posts tagged Grace
A Wedding, a Baby Shower and a Funeral
Apr 26th
Within a month I will have attended all three of these life events. These reality checks should be mandatory once a year for every human being. Why? Because they remind us of promises and futures. They give us perspective on our choices, and what we are sowing and reaping. And, if our hearts are beating at all, we will cry at all three.
Take weddings for example. The bride and groom’s ardent affection make me remember when love was new and the wounds not yet inflicted. I need to remember the helplessly giddy feelings—and cry. Am I still willing to give my heart to my husband with abandon? But their beaming faces also make me smile because I know, with God’s grace over time, those fresh, gushing promises of forever love and good behavior will turn into more than they could imagine. The wish for “happily ever after” will become a deep reservoir of victories and defeats, little deaths and resurrections, a history of two lives being melded into one. Love is transformed from shallow rapids in a stream into deep still waters.
Baby showers are bittersweet too. Reading the fear and panic on the faces of new moms, or moms again, remind me of just how fast time flies and just how faithful God is. You only have to be a few miles down the road to realize that the sweet cuddles are gone in a moment. Did I stop long enough to enjoy them? Did I plant the seeds of loving God in my children? The messes, questions and hopes of those beginning years will soon be whispers in our memory. God really is big enough to be God to our children, not just to us. And He will be their God even in our bad moments and failures.
Fortunately, this funeral celebrated a woman who loved God. So we did “not grieve as they who have no hope.” It was a refreshing change to celebrate a life well-walked with Jesus. It caused me to pause and reflect. Am I living in such a way that people know I love God? Not works. Just fruit. This woman had a beautiful display of fruit in the testimonies of others’ lives.
In contrast, the last several funerals I’ve attended have been for unbelievers or spiritual fence-sitters. It is amazing how we speak with gymnastic prowess around death when hell is very real. None of us can bear the thought of eternal separation from God, yet those people chose separation from Him in this life. Here is a hard question. If you don’t want to be with Jesus now, why would you want to go to heaven and be with Him forever?
When I die, I don’t want the speakers to be hanging on some tightrope that I am with Jesus based on some long forgotten church experience. I told Chuck, “If I go first, you tell the people at my funeral that there is no question about whose I am and where I am. I am with my Lover and I had just talked to Him the day I died.” Chuck laughed and shook his head. “I know honey, I know.”
Life well in Christ so you can die well Christ.
Don’t sleepwalk through your life. Examine, reflect, celebrate, change course. Plant God and harvest His life.
Don’t work more, worship more.
Apr 25th
I am reading this AMAZING book called, Compelled by Love, by Heidi Baker. She and her husband are lovers of Jesus and they pour out their lives to orphans in Mozambique, Africa. She says the poor and orphaned have taught her how to love. Talk about a paradigm shift.
Beyond her degrees, Powerpoints, and fundraising back up plans, she said that they have entered into the Life of Jesus — only. If God doesn’t show up, there is no food. If God doesn’t show up, there is no healing. If God doesn’t show up, they have no protection. So they worship… in everything. And God often responds in miracles and wonderful outpourings that many of us would have trouble believing. But her first goal, her first action, her first response is worship. She knows that the Presence of God is the only way she can live in the pressing need all around her.
Last night, I sat on my bed reading her God stories and just cried. Cried over the goodness of God. Cried over the way I get distracted and faithless. Cried over the groan and ache I have for more of Jesus, and yet –I still want my stuff, my way, my comfort.
Then I turned the page and saw a quote from Mother Teresa. She was asked how she managed to face the overwhelming needs day after day. She said:
“My secret is very simple: I pray. Through prayer I become one in love with Christ.
Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depths of our heart.”
At first I read this and was so comforted. But then I looked at the “overwhelming needs” of my day. And I wanted to throw up.
Am I feeding the poor? Caring for orphans? Am I doing something besides being distracted by the lies of my culture (more stuff, more bills, more beauty products) and seeking entertainment? (Do I even pray about my “friends” on Facebook? )
Will I invest even one honest season of worship in His presence without all the Christian trappings and just look for His face?
I would love to tell you, Yes, Yes, Yes. But I’m not so sure I can. What I can tell you is that I closed the book and began to pray. First I confessed my willingness to settle for the “pressure of the world” rather than seeking His power in my world. I thanked Him for the blessings of food, shelter, and abundance. When compared to most of the world, I live like a queen. And I can be as demanding and as ungrateful as a queen also. So I thanked Him for His grace and patience with me.
Then I began to pray for the poor and orphaned— in my life. Men and women who are poor in spirit, the people who in live life without the Father’s assurance. They (we) all need to be fed and comforted just like the abandoned ones in countries thousands of mile away. Then my heart turned to just speaking who He is, and how much I need Him and love Him, that He is the answer to all.
He is our greatest ache and groan.
Finally, I just sat in silence. And His presence came.
What did it feel like? Peace. Enveloping, warm, full of light. Peace. Peace that doesn’t always make sense or add up. “Peace that transcends understanding.” But a blanket of “I love you” just draped around me.
His Presence changes things. Our worship stirs His heart and then He stirs ours. He rights our view of our little world when we are reminded, again, it is His world. He is the loving King of all with not only the power but the desire to be God to us and for us.
Today, don’t plan a little more or work a little harder. Worship a little more. And watch God move.
Sweetly Broken Abortion Healing Retreat
Apr 24th
“I thought I was over it.”
“I’ve never told anyone.”
“I’m afraid God is punishing me.”
“How can I make this right?”
“How can I forgive…?”
We know how you feel. We have been there too.Through the fear, nightmares, denial, anger and regrets.
BUT we have passed through to a new place called peace, and true forgiveness.
We are still sad about the fact of our past, but we are no longer held captive by it.
God has shown us there is beauty in our brokenness.
We invite you to a tender, honest and safe weekend to
hear about how to walk forward in freedom.
What you can expect:
Time to process
Time to worship
Time to hear truth
Time to be honest
Time to sort out what’s next?
Teaching and materials by Jana Spicka.
2 night’s lodging at a lake house in Louisville, TN.
Check in at 5pm. First session at 7pm. Check out Sunday at 11am.
Four meals and snacks. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday morning. (Friday night dinner is on your own before first session.)
This is an intimate gathering for 9 women.
A New Spin on Forgiveness
Apr 23rd
I love it when the Holy Spirit blows me up. He keeps bringing revelation about love and forgiveness. At Yes and Amen the Lord called for us to fall in love with Him. How do we love Him more? At WGR class last Tuesday, we looked at the parable Jesus told about the two debtors.
“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”
Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.”
“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. (Luke 7:41)
Jesus used this parable to challenge the hard-hearted homeowner who scorned the woman washing Jesus’s feet with her tears. The bottom line is he who has been forgiven much, loves much. Jesus directly equates our ability to love with our willingness to receive forgiveness from God. But there’s more.
Sunday morning, I was in a wad before church and journaled out some confusion and frustrations in relationships. The Lord spoke that forgiveness was the key. So I wrote out the names of the strained relationships and asked the Lord to bring forgiveness to bear in the hearts involved. Then, what was the topic at church on Sunday morning?
Yes, a message on forgiveness. There were new pieces revealed in this conversation with the Lord even as the pastor was speaking.
The pastor, Scott Hughes, taught out of Luke 9 where Jesus said that if we are to follow him, we must take up our cross daily. I began to groan under the hint of “work it up” theology, but Scott quickly commented how misunderstood this verse is. He broke down the meaning. The cross is a symbol of God’s love, the sacrifice of Jesus, the total forgiveness of our sin, but also the sin of every person in the world. The cross means I’m forgiven, but so is the person I have conflict with.
So when we take up our cross daily, we take up, we carry around with us, the weight, the meaning, the reality, of God’s love and his total forgiveness. We carry the cross so we think rightly about our relationship with God and our total acceptance by Him. But we also carry the cross as a reminder that the others in our lives, even the ones we want to punch in the face, are also dearly loved and forgiven by God.
Then the Lord added His beautiful touch of revelation and the pieces starting connecting together like magnets pulling pins together.
He brought back a memory from another sermon from a few Easter’s ago. Greg Pinkner had fish tank on the stage and illustrated the story of the ax head being raised up out of the river. He said it was a picture of the resurrection of Christ. Greg had a blooming dogwood branch in his hand. As as he taught — about things begin buried, out of reach, and should not be able to be raised up, things like an ax head, like our sin, like the crucified man named Jesus—he would push the dogwood branch down to the bottom of the water and hold it there.
But as he talked about the power of God, the power of His word, the heart of God to restore all things, Pinkner would release the branch and it would spring back to the surface of the water. The branch could not stay submerged. It had to come to the surface. He did this three or four times. By the third time, I wanted to stand up and yell HALLELUJAH!!! God has taken our sin and our separation and by His own Hand, He buried it in Jesus, once and for all. And then by His own mercy, He called Jesus back out of the grave and us with Him! Jesus could not stay in the grave!
So the cross isn’t just a sign of death. It is a sign of Life. New Life. Resurrected Life. When we pick up our cross daily we can take our offenses and hurts and “bury them” in the Cross of Jesus. He will bring new life where there was only death and separation before. And part of His new life, is an increased love for Him and for others because of this beautiful forgiven and resurrected life.
Oh the beauty of the Forgiving Father! The power of the Resurrected Christ! The promise of the Wonderful Counselor who leads us into increasing freedom with others, and from others.
Could we love others more if we forgave more? Could we love others more if we embraced how much we have been forgiven by God? May God grant us eyes to see and ears to hear all that He has in store for us through His love.
Be Loved
Feb 14th
Wanted to turn our hearts to the Heart of God today. Regardless of the outcome of your earthly Valentine’s Day, soak on these truths…
Your Maker is your Husband (Isaiah 54:5)
He rescued you because He delights in you (Psalm 18:19)
Let Him kiss you with the kisses of His mouth
For your love is is more delightful than wine (Song of Songs 1: 2)
Never will I leave you or forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5)
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!”
Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life. (Revelation 22: 17)
Happy Valentine’s Day.
From your One True Love