Lots of Lard

It's crazy how despite six intense months of God revealing so much about my character flaws and His more than sufficient grace, I still have such a vast amount of learning that remains about the infinite God I love. Yep, despite doing a DTS (Discipleship Training School) and becoming a member of the influential YWAM (Youth With A Mission) family, I'm still human. And yet as I enter back home refreshed and renewed by a recently revised relationship with God, I continue to see that God is more than willing to strengthen the convictions He has begun to instill in me. With God continuing to immerse me into different situations, I'm able to see the reality of the issues that He has already begun to stir in my heart.


The last blog I wrote was my response to a personal conviction. As I remain a human-being short of His glory, I attempted to summon up the heaviness the Holy Spirit pressed into me in regards to the two simple, overlooked words-->spiritual and ministry<--. The conviction remains and God's passion for this generation is abiding deeper into my heart. Were I to recall in the short time that I have been back home how many times I have used these two words, I have most likely run out of tallies to make for them to be accounted for. It wasn't until this past week where I opened my eyes to see, once again, God convicting me of the disgusting misrepresentation, or rather misuse, of these two words. And in contradiction to what I had had my eyes opened up to, I was just as guilty of using words in such an insincere way.


The day before I flew back home, I was able to see the sights of Dresden, Germany with some friends from my DTS and I had the privilege to get a finer experience of traditional German food. In preparing me for what was to come, my friend told me about the appetizer that was going to be brought out. When she told me, I was disgusted. It was a platter of different slices of bread served with a spread. Sounds great, right? Well, the spread was the kicker. They made it by placing chopped up onions, corn, spices, and herbs into a small bowl and then threw in old grease from previously cooked meats only to let it sit and harden to be served as a butter-like spread. After the appetizer plate came, what did I do? I took a piece of bread and shyly put a little of this lard on. Seriously. My friend had just explained to me what the spread was less than ten minutes prior to eating it. Here's the best part. After eating the first piece of bread, I had a second piece of bread with even more of the lard junk! I can hardly write this now without stopping to take a deep breath and checking to see if my heart is still beating. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but SERIOUSLY???!!! That spread was lard. That lard was gnarly and nasty...and I ate it.


This is the part where I turn this fun anecdote into a "spiritual" lesson in hopes of encouraging those in "ministry." Do you see what it is like? My dear friend, Jesus Christ, gave me a MAJOR download of all the ingredients that are going into these once precious and powerful words and yet I continue to eat them up in their pitiful and pathetic distorted definition that many Christians are applying to these words.


Less than a month of being back home, I see the reality of what I accepted into my body-which was lard. More importantly, I see the reality of my contribution to this process of misusing words, resulting in a deteriorating demonstration of truth and instilling a false definition of "spiritual" and "ministry." Hmmm....we don't need a new definition of these two words much like we don't need a new definition of Christianity. We need a new demonstration.


To put it shortly, I'm still learning and that makes me psyched! God desires more for my life than I can imagine. Since He has to bring more correction into my life through the Holy Spirit in order to make me more and more like the woman He desires for me to be, I pray for Him to continue to open my eyes to all the other lard I've been eating from this broken world because I'm hungry for something else.