Passion 2012: A Response

I feel like a refreshing wind has blown over me and filled my lungs with fresh air these last few days. The experience I had in Atlanta this week at Passion 2012 was, for lack of a better word, incredible. And, honestly, it's not fitting to say it was an experience, but rather an encounter. As I spent my days with 45,000 of my brothers and sisters in the Georgia Dome, I became increasingly more aware of God's presence and His intentions to speak to us, both at large as His Bride but also personally. As I sit here and reflect on what I heard from the Lord at Passion, I am overwhelmed. I won't go into everything now, but here are a few of the realities that took grip on my heart over the last four days:

1. The Lord's primary desire is to see Himself glorified, and married to that desire is His heart for the proclamation of the gospel and the establishment of justice among the nations. As a big fan of Piper, the reality of God's fundamental desire being His glory was not new to me, nor was the idea that God has a desire for the nations (a concept I studied last year in Perspectives). However, it wasn't until this conference that I realized the depth of God's heart for justice. A few books (The Hole in Our Gospel, Generous Justice, The Irresistible Revolution) had brought the idea to my mind a few times over the last few years, but it never clicked until now just how serious the Lord is calling His people to be about justice. I'll write more about this another time, because this was huge for me.

2. If I don't claim Truth, I will believe lies. There wasn't any particular teaching on this idea, but this reality kept striking me throughout the conference. Francis Chan spoke about the critical importance of being people who read through the Word again and again and again, which was really convicting to me. I realized that it's not enough to be familiar with the Word of God; we must be a people who feast on the Word continually, because this produces life in us. It really struck me that Satan desires to deceive us, and that he is very, very good at it. Lies and death push into our hearts without ceasing, and the only way to survive and thrive in the face of this is to be constant in our intake of Truth.

3. My weaknesses, imperfections, and areas of brokenness do not disqualify me from living a life of significance and influence. One of the lies I face again and again is the idea that because I am weak and imperfect, I will not be able to live my days out of significance and meaningful, positive influence. Often, I do feel disqualified, as if I have nothing to offer because I keep messing up in life. However, through various conversations with friends and other moments of reflection, I felt a great peace that God is taking my struggles and making them into areas of expertise for my ministry. I remember tweeting sometime last year, "The things Satan intends to use to destroy your ministry are the same things God uses to build and equip you for ministry." Oh, how quickly I had forgotten to hold on to that! I am thankful that God reminded me of that revelation and set my feet back the solid ground of that truth.

4. The time is now. The final major revelation I walked away with from Passion 2012 is that living out my purpose and walking in significance begins now, not later. In his closing message, Louie Giglio said, "Our culture teaches us that significance can't come until 'after... [fill in the blank (college, marriage, a secure job)].' But Jesus comes and says, 'Today!' Our purpose and mission are already established, and we are called to walk in it daily, starting the moment we gain life in Christ." I regularly wonder the purpose of life in regards to "today," and Louie spoke truth I desperately needed to hear concerning that--that we make our days purposeful and significant through our dedication to proclaiming and portraying Christ wherever we go. I also came to realize that experiencing, loving, encountering, worshiping, enjoying, and living in relationship with God day by day is also a fundamental part of the purposefulness of our lives. After all, that is how we will spend eternity, is it not?

All in all, Passion was a phenomenal encounter with the Lord, and I received so much from my time in Atlanta. I had a blast with my friends, worshiped with the largest crowd of believers I've ever experienced, and was pumped full of truth and encouragement. I'm sure I'll blog more these next few weeks as I continue to process the things I learned there. But for now, this will suffice.

My Unsatisfied Soul

Rooted deep within all of us is an unyeilding desire for satisfaction. We spend our days searching for ways to feel complete, happy, purposeful--satisfied. We look for satisfaction in so many different ways and areas. We pursue entertainment, pleasure, relationships, connection, power, success, religion. We are ever-looking for ways, people, or things to convince us or remind us that life is worth living, and when we lose people or positions or pleasures that played into our satisfaction, we may feel deep grief, and we are forced to ask ourselves once again, "What can I now gain that might satisfy me?" And so the search continues, a cycle of adding and subtracting, gaining and losing, wanting and needing.

A predominant saying in American Christian culture is that there is a "God-shaped hole in our hearts." We are taught that those who don't accept Christ can never be satisfied, because even if they have all the other compartments of their heart filled, they lack the final piece -- a relationship with God. For as long as I can remember, I have spent my time assuming that I had the metaphorical God-shaped hole in my heart filled, since I do have a relationship with God, but feeling very aware that other areas of my heart were still empty and needing to be filled. I have lived desperately searching and struggling to obtain satisfaction in my soul by trying to make and save money, to find a supportive community, to secure meaningful leadership roles, and, more than anything else, to find and develop a relationship that would lead to marraige. I have believed that God, plus these things, would give me satisfaction, and I have labored intentionally and strategically to achieve them.

The problem that I have encountered time and time again, though, is that these other areas of my heart that I keep trying to fill absolutely refuse to stay filled. I get one of the pieces in place, and I have a few days in which I excitedly think to myself, "Satisfaction is so close now." But, in time, that piece will fall away, and it devastates me. It leaves me feeling hopeless, desperate, utterly discouraged and overwhelmed with longing. I feel fatigue in my spirit, and I am broken and lost. I wonder is satisfaction is even possible, and I begin to believe that it is not.

I've been feeling this way for weeks now, and the weight is crushing. I remember other seasons in my life in which I have felt similar desperation, and I am discouraged by how frequent these "valley" seasons are. I wonder what I am doing wrong, and I can't seem to be content with people telling me, "God will provide these things for you in time. You just need to wait for Him." It all seems like one big game, and I feel like I am losing.

Over the last few days, I have come to one of the most difficult realizations I have ever faced. I have realized that there is not a God-shaped hole in my heart. I have realized that God is not a puzzle piece to my satisfaction; rather, God is to be mycomplete satisfaction. I have realized that Christians are not only able to be satisfied because they have the God-piece, but they are called to be satisfied in God, even when all other desires go unmet. If I never get married, or my marriage fails, or my husband dies, or if I find myself in poverty or sickness, or if I am lonely, or anything else, I am still commanded to rejoice. The Bible is overflowing with commands to rejoice, in both the Old and New Testament. Philippians 4:4 cuts me the deepest: "Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again--rejoice!" Always.

This realization is dreadfully difficult for me for one simple reason: I am not satisfied with God alone. This is a terrifying statement, because I am struck with the awareness that I do not know how to generate a sense of satisfaction in God in myself. Satisfaction is something that rises up within you, not something you can congure into being. Based on that reality, I realize the only way to obtain satisfaction in God alone is to beg earnestly for it, just as David did in Psalm 90:14-15 when he said, "Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!"

The definition of satisfy is "to fulfill the desires, expectations, needs, or demands of a person; to give full contentment." As I type that out, I begin to think about how I cannot even fathom what full contentment would feel like, because I have never experienced it. All this time, although I have had genuine love for God and a true desire to serve Him, I have had a wrong understanding of who God was to be in my life, and that has resulted in idols and dependencies in my life that produce unhealth and consequently lack of satisfaction in my soul. Today I understand that I must and canbe satisfied in God alone, and although I am not there yet, I hope earnestly that one day I will be and that my life will be a shining example of a woman radiant with the joy of Christ, who will say and mean that at the right hand of God there are pleasures ever-more, that God is enough, and that in Him life is abundant. One day I will mean those things, and until that day, I will labor and seek to know the one true God better, and I believe with great confidence that my faithful God will not leave me disappointed.