Episode 41: My spiritual journey

Listen as a podcast by clicking the black box below or go to your favorite podcasting place and search for The All Gifts Podcast . . . or read the blog version below.

Well, loved ones, I’ve been on quite a journey! I don’t know if the term Christian deconstruction adequately describes it but over the past couple of years, I’ve examined my beliefs to determine what I really believe and why.  

My friend Kim and I with Catherine, a counselor at When the Saints, a safe home for girls.

I’ve questioned and rejected my cessationist upbringing. Cessationism is the doctrine that spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues, prophecy and healing ceased with the first century apostles.

I’ve also detoxed from performance-based teaching and preaching.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the foundation and grace I’ve received in my previous ministries.  They are well-meaning, mostly good-hearted people. People who value their salvation and winning other souls to Christ and who desperately want to ensure that no one “falls away.”

But speaking of questioning, what does that term “falling away” really mean anyway? These are some of the questions with which I’ve wrestled.

I do not have the answers.

But in this podcast, I give you a peek behind the curtain of my process that I’d like to think, has matured and strengthened my faith and relationship with God.

In this season of The All Gifts Podcast, I’m going to continue to share about this journey and how it recently took me across the world to Malawi, Africa and what I learned there.

I’m excited to share more about the organization I visited in Malawi, When the Saints, a trauma safe house for girls sixteen years and younger who have been sexually abused or rescued from sex trafficking. You may recall I first introduced you to them on Episode 39.

We will go a little deeper and hear from some of their staff, amazing people with tremendous stories of faith. Be sure to check out this podcast episode or my YouTube channel so you can see my new friends as well as hear them!

You might be asking yourself what all this has to do with All Gifts.

Everything’s connected.

In early 2021, a listener of the All Gifts Podcast, connected me to the founder of When the Saints David Peterka and his wife Essy. Although I’d never felt called to missionary work, from the moment we met, I felt compelled to make the journey across the world to learn more about and to support what they do. For more background on that, check out my interview with David on Episode 39.

I started All Gifts because I looked back at the painful things in my life with gratitude. I could see how God used those hard things to make me who I am today. No one exhibits that heart posture greater than the people I met in Malawi. Every day they look at the hard facts of life with joy, resilience, strength, and faith. I’ll forever be impacted by how they’ve turned their pain into gifts, and I hope you will as well.

In Malawi, I was reminded of the story of Joseph from Genesis chapters 37-50. Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Even in slavery, Joseph rose to the top, becoming part of his master’s trusted inner circle. But there he was falsely accused and sent to prison. In prison, Joseph was faithful and remained close to God and eventually his talent landed him back into a high position of influence controlling the food supply for all of Israel during a deadly famine. It was during this famine that Joseph was reunited with the brothers who sold him into slavery. His response when he saw them was more than gracious,

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Now that’s a person who has been able to work through his pain and find his purpose.

Let’s face it, there’s no shortage of pain.  All Gifts isn’t about denying or repressing our pain. It’s about dealing with our pain then finding our purpose through it.

Around the time I first met When the Saints, I had a watershed moment sitting by a pool in Santa Barbara on a girl’s weekend. My friends were out getting coffee so I had my usual morning quiet time with God. But this one was significant because a piece of truth I’d previously stumbled past was suddenly illuminated in my soul.  

I saw that the past 16 years I’d walked with God in phases.

The first phase had been about learning who God really was. Not a projection of my parental relationships or what other people taught me, but the real him. Reading the entire bible for the first time and books like A.W. Tozer’s The Attributes of God helped. The next phase was understanding who I was to him. My identity in Christ as a beloved child of God. These phases are still going on and probably always will be.

This past year, on that bright Santa Barbara morning, I entered a new phase where, for the first time, I saw that loving other people really mattered. It mattered as much as loving God.

It was how to love God.

Especially when we love those that are difficult, uncomfortable, or inconvenient to love.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that loving people is a basic tenet of Christianity. But to move from theory to practice . . . well, that’s a whole other thing.

I had this realization and then almost immediately, God provided a way to practice by giving me When the Saints.

This is a testament to God’s perfect timing.

For years I avoided the topic of sexual abuse because it made my stomach turn. Then, as I’ve talked about on this podcast, God brought me through a season of facing and healing some childhood trauma. I don’t think it’s an accident that I went through that first. I don’t think I could support or help anyone else in trauma until I’d healed from my own.

Once healed, I wanted to help other people who’d been through trauma find the gifts in their pain. So, I started the podcast which led to someone introducing me to When the Saints. This was such a gift from God because I specifically wanted to help with sex trafficking but prior to meeting David, I wasn’t sure where to start.  

I can see how God took something from one season, built on it, and used it for another season. All these things were connected for my good and to give me a great purpose to help others.

I hope this season of The All Gifts Podcast inspires you to look for the ways this is playing out in your life.

Where do you see a connection between hard things and your purpose? Where do you see yourself questioning and rebuilding your beliefs? Where is Christ renewing you?

As I share my journey, I’d love to hear how it’s going for you. Send me a message or leave a comment!