Blog Change Reveal

            When I first started this blog back in 2013, I derived the name “One Step” from a short song that one of my Bible college professors taught us.  You can see the full lyrics here.  We sang this song at the beginning of each Victorious Christian Living class.  I chose “One Step” because of the personal meaning that it held and because it I thought it summed up what I wanted to write about.  I still love the name, but I have decided to change the name of my blog for a couple of reasons:

1) My url does not match my blog name, which can make it confusing to find.  The blogspot address using “onestep” was already taken when I created my blog.      

2) “One Step” is a pretty commonly used name.  If you Google it, you will find everything from marketing companies and software to contraceptives and cleaners.

            Therefore, for the past couple of weeks, I have been brainstorming new name ideas with the help of my husband.  He jokingly came up with a few infertility-related suggestions such as “Make Womb for the King” and “Peaceful Placenta.”  He is definitely good at making me laugh!  For real though, he is super supportive and helpful about giving feedback, and he even proofreads my posts for me!  Actually, this post was all his idea.  He’s trying to persuade me to give him the title of editor in chief.  I’m not totally convinced.

Anyway, some honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the cut were “Shay the Sheep” (too cutesy), “Resting in the Rock” (already taken), and “Extraordinary Exchange” (too long and complicated sounding).  After sifting through hundreds of words and phrases and about thirty resulting name ideas, I’ve narrowed the list down to five finalists.  For the rest of this post, I’ll reveal the five names and give explanations for each of them.  Then, you can head over to my Facebook group here and cast your vote in the poll to let me know which one is your favorite!  Without any further ado, here are the five finalists (in the order that I came up with them):

Shay’s Song

       The first three finalists came as a result of experimenting with parts of my name paired with words that are related to faith and life.  For this one, I used one of my nicknames for simplicity and ease of spelling (you’re welcome).  “Song” was a natural choice not only because it incorporates my love for music, but because it is a word that is used to describe life in general.  It can also carry with it the connotation of worship.    

Phillips Freed

       Finalist number two uses my last name in conjunction with a concept that is taught throughout Scripture, but is particularly evident in the book of Galatians.  I am free in Christ!  Free from the crushing weight of legalism.  Free from the punishment and the power of sin.  Free to choose life and righteousness.  Free to learn and grow without fear.  Free to be all that God made me to be.  Free to live abundantly.  Understood properly, freedom is a great word to describe the life that Jesus has provided with His blood for each of us who believes.          

 

Hope Dawns

       Hope is another wonderful gift that we have in Jesus.  I’m not talking here just about wishful thinking, but about a steadying assurance based on truth.  I love Hebrews 6 and the way it describes our hope.  God’s promises are sure, and He cannot lie.  Jesus is alive and will forever stand before God as evidence that our debt has been paid.  He already conquered death, and He is coming back.  He is our anchor in a world that seems so hopeless.  He is the Light in the darkness.  “Dawn” can point to the hope that grows in a person who trusts in Jesus or to the hope of His return.  It also happens to be my middle name.        

We Are Seen

       This name comes from Genesis 16 and the story of Hagar.  She was a simple maid who ran away from Abraham and Sarah after being used and abused.  By the world’s standards, she had very little value.  No one would have cared about her plight.  However, God cared.  He reached out to her in her distress, and He comforted her.  She was a nobody, but He promised to give her more descendants than she could count.  After that, she called God “El-roi,” which means “the God who sees me.”  No matter what we are going through in this life and no matter what the world says, God sees us.  He really sees us.    

Ditching Duplicity

       If you read last week’s post, you might remember that I talked a little bit about how the Christian life on this earth is all about narrowing the gap of duplicity between the truth of our position in Christ and our daily outward practice.  We do this by the power of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of bringing God glory and reaching others for Him without being hindered.  Because of sin, we are all hypocrites to some extent.  We don’t all live exactly what we believe perfectly in every moment.  However, God has given us the power and the freedom to choose to ditch duplicity and to become in practice more like who we really are in Christ.       

Now, head over to my Facebook group and cast your vote!  I’ll announce my final decision next Monday along with the date of the official change.   

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Change, "Finding Yourself," and Narrowing the Gap of Duplicity

            I used to think “change” was a dirty word.  I know I’m not alone.  My school yearbooks have the same message written all over them: “Have a great summer!  Don’t ever change!”  One of the main excuses for divorce goes something like this: “We’ve both just changed too much.  We aren’t the same people we were when we said our vows all those years ago.”  A Dad-ism I grew up with was, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”  I still think that philosophy is valid in some cases.  I crave consistency, structure, and even monotony.  It’s known.  Tested.  Safe.

            Then two things happened that began to significantly change (ha!) my perspective on change.  First, I married a dreamer.  Jon and I are about as opposite as a couple can get in nearly every way.  He likes his steak medium-rare, and I like well-done; why should this area be any different?  Where I resist change, Jon seeks it.  He brings the innovation to my consistency, the spontaneity to my structure, and the adventure to my monotony.  This dichotomy makes us drive each other crazy, but it is also the reason why we are crazy about each other.  We are stronger together.  Second, adult life happened.  We have been pelted with an absurd amount of major external and internal changes in the past five and a half years.  Even though all those changes were difficult for me in the moment, I can look back and see why they were necessary and how God has used them for good.  It has taught me that change is simply a part of life, and it’s not something I can avoid.  Neither is it something I should dread.

            In fact, the life of a Jesus follower is summed up in the word “change.”  Romans 12:2 instructs us, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect” (NLT).  Why is such an obvious truth so hard for us to grab a hold of?  One reason is that the world has it all backwards (shocker there, right?).  Our culture tells us that we need to find ourselves – to figure out who we think we are –  then defend that identity and resist becoming anyone else with all our might.  We must never change.  This way of thinking is all about self, and though it masquerades as empowerment, it is really a crippling victim mindset:

•       I must “find” who I am.
•       I can’t help what I find (I will never admit that I have a choice in the matter).
•      What I do is based on who I am. 
•       If I can’t help who I am, I can’t help what I do.
•       I can justify my behavior, no matter how appalling or wrong, based on who I am. 

      I believe this whole philosophy is a huge contributor to our country’s problems of depression, suicide, and violence.  You see, underneath this messy logic, we are really subconsciously blaming our Maker for our behavior instead of taking responsibility for our own actions.  Not only that, but we are trying to find our identities in ourselves and apart from our Creator, whose very image is woven into the fabric of our being – believer or not.  What an impossible and hopeless task!  Anything that we can possibly discover about ourselves apart from Him is at best incomplete.  At the same time we are being pushed to reject the only One who can tell us who we were always meant to be and who has the power to change us into that person from the inside out.  Matthew 10:39 warns us, “He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”  When we cling to the life and identity of our own construction, we will come up lost and empty.  However, when we recognize that our life is really not our own and offer it up to be transformed by the One who brought it into existence, we will end up finding what we were searching for in the first place.

      So, what does this transformation look like?  Does God want to trash us, start over from scratch, and make a bunch of little clones?  No!  God did make us as individuals with our own personalities, life experiences, talents, and purposes.  However, apart from Him we are dead in our sin (Eph. 2:1-3).  A dead person cannot grow or do anything useful.  The only transformation a dead person can experience on his own is deterioration.  The first transformation must happen through belief in Jesus Christ.  When we put our faith in Him, He makes us spiritually alive (Eph. 2:4-9).  Jesus takes our sin into His account, and He puts His righteousness into our account.  Picture Him taking on all of your student loans, car loans, mortgages, credit card debt, and personal loans so that you are no longer responsible for them and in return giving you an entire life savings to put into your bank account.  It’s a weak and incomplete picture, but it gives you a small idea of what He offers to you spiritually.  When we put our trust in Him based on the work that was accomplished through His death and resurrection, our position changes from:

dead to alive

a child of wrath to a child of God

unrighteous to righteous

sinner to saint

debtor to forgiven

enslaved to free

lost to saved

…

            Are you getting the picture?  When we put our faith in Christ, God sees us through the lens of His Son.  We are complete, perfect, and glorified in Him.  That is who we are, and it cannot be changed any further.  It’s a done deal.  What a complete and utter transformation!  However, if that is true, why are churches full of unrighteous people who still live like they are lost and enslaved to sin?

            The answer lies in the fact that the transformation of our outward practice does not change at the same time or rate as the transformation of our position before God.  Our position refers to how God sees us.  He is outside of time, so He sees us as finished, glorified, and perfected because He sees the whole picture.  However, our outward practice is very much bound to time.  Changing our outward practice is a process that will not be complete until Jesus takes us home.  Think about it.  Putting your faith in Jesus does not instantly eradicate your drug habit, your porn addiction, your lack of self-control, your gossip problem, or the immoral relationship you have with that man you have no business being with.  Learning to walk in freedom from these sins takes time, but it is so important.  While our practice is so very different from our position, our witness to other people is shot.  No one wants to listen to a hypocrite.  Not only that, but when we sin, we are not acting in accordance with our truest identity.  We are not being ourselves.  This is why I said earlier that the Christian life is summed up by the word “change.”  Our mission is to be able to share what God has done with others without being completely sabotaged by our own hypocrisy, and to become in our behavior who we really are before God (the big Bible word for this is sanctification).  This brings glory to our Father in heaven.  To that end, God is constantly working on transforming us through our obedience to Him so that the gap of duplicity (as our Pastor so often calls it) between our practice and our position narrows.  That gap won’t completely disappear during our time on earth, but we can take hope in the fact that “God, who began the good work within [us], will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Phil. 1:6, NLT).  Change that is brought about by Jesus in ourselves or in others isn't something to be resisted or feared, but to be expected and welcomed with hopeful anticipation.    

Speaking of change…

           

            You may have noticed some changes on my site.  A few months ago, I joined a Facebook group for Moms in the Making bloggers.  I have been learning a lot from them, and visiting their blogs has inspired me to continue improving the look, the functionality, and the content of my site.  There is one major change that I have been considering for a while now, and I’m finally going to take the plunge – however I will need your help on deciding the specifics for this particular change.  Come back next Monday to find out more! 


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Re-Starting: Thawing the Grief-Chilled Heart

Photo by Viktor Jakovlev on Unsplash

I can feel the sun’s warm rays settling into my shoulders and offsetting the cool water lapping gently up against my legs.  There’s something eerie about the formless and muffled chatter that surrounds me.  I know that hundreds of other swimmers are in the wave pool, yet I am alone.  I stare at the white wall with its painted waves, all perfectly uniform.  Several feet from the wall, there is a rope past which no one is permitted to wander.  A shiver bolts down my spine as my imagination conjurs impressions of fins, then of opaque and endless depths.  What lurks beneath the surface?  It’s still - too still.  My mind snaps back to my body just as the horn sounds, and as I turn, I bump into a black inner tube.  I’ve drifted too far. 

I see the water as it builds, but I can’t move fast enough.  No matter which way I turn, the path is blocked with rubber and limbs.  The water pulls at me and soon, I am engulfed in chaotic silence and darkness.  I scramble desperately to reach the light that had kissed my skin just moments ago, but my reward is only a fraction of a breath before the weight of another wave forces me under again.  With each blow, the struggle gets more difficult, my energy wanes, and still the next wave exceeds the ferocity of the last.  Eventually, I grow numb, and an icy stillness trickles down my veins as I stop flailing.  I wonder if anyone sees, or if I will simply disappear. 

We all face this reality at different times and in different ways. The constant grief arising from one devastating circumstance after another threatens to wring out every ounce of hope and life we have left.  We become empty shells of who we once were, drained by doubt, anxiety, fear, shock, and anger.  Life looks different.  People look different.  Jaded and cynical, we can find ourselves trapped in a cycle of “bickering, bitterness, and bereavement” (as Pastor Scott Mathis described in his message titled "Of Life Cycles and Choices" a few Sundays back) in our relationship with God and with others.  No one wants to feel that way or live that way, but sometimes it feels like life really hasn’t given us a choice.  We get stuck.

Before I get into this next part, I need you to know something.  When I first started writing this, I couldn’t get past the first two paragraphs.  My brain and heart were frozen.  I had no more answers.  I had no explanations or wisdom.  I had no Christian bandaids big enough to stop the bleeding.  If that’s where you are, know that you aren’t alone.  Pain and suffering are part of this life, and God is gracious in allowing us to grieve, hurt, and wrestle through it all.  We don’t have to pretend that everything is okay and that we understand everything perfectly.  When Job was stripped of nearly everything he had, the Bible says that his friends sat with him in silence for a full week because his deep pain was so visibly evident (Job 2:13).  In such moments of raw pain, many of us are not even able to process words of explanation or hope, no matter how truthful they might be - and that’s okay.  God has given us the process of grieving for a reason.  We need time to gain our bearings before we can even start to think about the “why,” the “what’s next,” and the “where is God in this?”

However, what happens when the room stops spinning, we regain our mental faculties, and we begin to have the desire to recover, but we still feel trapped and pinned down by our circumstances?  Where is the way out - the way to rise above it all - that God has provided?  How can we move on beyond the paralyzing stages of bitterness, bickering, and bereavement to rebuilding our faith and relationships?   How do we get un-stuck?  I was mulling over Pastor Scott’s answer to these questions one night before youth group while Jon was working on getting the computer and the projector to reconcile their differences, and a simple analogy dawned on me: what is the first step I take when my computer freezes?  I restart-it.

In Revelation 2, Jesus addresses the church in Ephesus.  This church was persevering and pressing on in doing many good things, but they had grown cold - they had left their first love.  In verse 5, Jesus explains to them the way to revive their hearts: “Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the deeds you did at first....”  This is the passage that a dear friend chose for my bridal shower devotional, and it has lingered in my mind ever since.  When I sense that my heart, my marriage, or my spiritual walk growing cold - chilled by bitterness and bereavement - I know that this is the remedy Jesus has provided.  I must “re-start.”  I have to remember the time when my heart was still soft and choose to do the things I did at that time. 

Our relationship with God impacts all other relationships that we have.  If we aren’t right with God, then all our other relationships are affected.  If we find ourselves stuck, then we must first apply the “re-start” principle to this area.    We must return to the basics of our faith and do the things we did when we first believed.  Some examples that God has brought to mind are:

• Recognizing God for who He is and worshipping Him (My mind is completely blown by the fact that Job’s first response to his incredible loss was to worship God - see Job 1:20)

• Seeing myself as I am - a forgiven sinner bought at a steep price

• Freely choosing to extend the forgiveness and grace to others that God has shown to me

• Trusting God with all my heart and obeying His Spirit when He leads

• Resting in God’s love

• Seeking Him out daily

• Talking to others about Him and what He has done

Like most faith-related principles, “re-starting” is a process that must be adhered to consistently over time.  It does not erase our circumstances or provide instant relief from our grief.  Rather, it is like climbing a rope out of a deep hole in the ground.  “Re-starting” requires intentional effort, and it likely won’t be easy.  However, as we choose in each moment to replace the old with the new, as we seek to do the things we did at first, and as we choose to keep our eyes upward instead of inward, we will eventually find that healing has taken place and we can once again grow and thrive.  We will reach the surface, and we will be stronger than we were before, not because of anything in and of ourselves, but because we will see clearly again that God is faithful even in the muck and the waves.