{Tanasia just returned from a Cru Summer Project in Colorado called Urban Summit Adventures. She shares about what God taught her about mission while serving and living life in community.} Repurposing Your Past for the Present and Future: How God showed me one
of the Main Purposes of Mission
Mission…in
Colorado and all over, it…is… a lot of things that people never tell you and
that no one could expect. Ever. Our God is the God of making the impossible,
possible. He is the God of renewal and when you give your sin, confusion and
the dark, broken parts of yourself to Him, don’t expect to keep them a secret;
especially not on mission. The Lord seeks to use those things that He delivers
us from for His glory by using us as living testimonies AND give us freedom in
the process. This freedom is explained thoroughly in Romans chapter eight,
starting with everyone’s favorite bible verse, “there is no condemnation for
those in Christ”. We tout it around and make it our own without making it our
own. We don’t hide in our hearts what the next verses say about us being “free
from sin and death and alive with the Holy Spirit”. We often live in shame and
bondage at the hands of the very things that Christ died to set us free from.
Through my going
on mission this Summer, the Lord exposed and began to break up this deadly
pattern of forsaking His promise of freedom through a myriad of happenings up
until the very last week but, specifically, somewhere right in the middle. He
asked me to do one thing that toppled the core of my existence, quite
literally. He challenged me to see what He thought of my sisters and me and to
walk in it. He led me to give a women’s talk. Just writing that sentence still
gives me the hebegeebees. Let me explain, one cannot give a women’s talk to a
camp of women and high school ladies without exploring two of my biggest life
struggles: what it means to be a woman of God and purity. At the time when
God’s workings led people on project to look to the very least likely of
candidates for this talk, these were the two things that I was most ashamed of.
Being a woman of God and my pitch black past in reference to purity. Embracing
the worldview of godly women as weak, quiet, submissive to man and still
indebted for Eve’s sin led me to shame and being conflicted about whether or
not I was even a godly woman. And I’ve been sexually active since I was
fourteen and have struggled, immensely, with being a slave to sexual sin to this
very day, as I write this very sentence. The most muddled parts of my life He sought to
use.
I was ready but not
nearly as ready as the Lord was, of course. See, being free is not all about
being able to tell your business because I can testify to anyone about anything
because the Lord has brought me a mighty, mighty, mighty long way but I had
trouble resting, in my spirit. Shame found me in my quiet places where only
egregious memories and my conscious and subconscious resided; this has been
breaking me without me even noticing. But I serve a God who counts every hair
on my head as His own and loves me with a love that was spelled out with the
sacrifice of His own blood!
As I sought to
prepare for this talk He showed me verses about women like Rahab the prostitute
and great woman of God in Joshua 2 and revealed how He loved, provided, and
made promises to Eve even as He was simultaneously giving her consequences for
her sin throughout Genesis. He showed me in Luke 7 where He honored a sinful woman
over a Pharisee because, “ those who are forgiven much; love much” and all
types of things that directly spoke to the sinful, ashamed and desperately
broken woman in me. He remedied my identity crisis by showering me with love
through words that I had never read, even Proverbs 31; they were all in God’s word,
which I had ignored. I traded God’s view of me for the world’s view but He
ministered to me while ministering through me in this talk. “This is what your
God, your heavenly Dad says about you”, I uttered to the ladies as tears began
to swell in my eyes after exploring women in God’s word in this talk. He
whispered in my spirit as I spoke aloud to these ladies, “This is what I think,
how I feel about YOU!!!”
God’s love for
me, as a woman faced constantly with sin and stumbling but still surrendering
to Him, as a woman who is loud and boisterous and still struggling to
understand and accept what “submissiveness” is, a woman who has been as far
from purity as one can stray, glowed brighter than I had ever imagined it. My
God, opposed to what the world, my past or my mind had to say, loved me, in a
special way, regardless.
I’ve found that being
a godly woman, according to GOD, is very simple. It is founding our identities
in Him through His word and spirit and not leaning on the easily accessible
whims of the world when it comes to our identity as women. The biggest thing
that mission, in my opinion, does is it shows you, personally, how the Lord
seeks to minister to you, while ministering through you in all things. Some of
my biggest lessons came out of this as I served campers and families and lived
with strangers who I grew to know as great women and a man of God for two
months in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.
