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Issue 5, Vol 2, 2010

 

Sixteen years ago, I passed over.
Five years ago, I passed over.
Once again, I'm passing over.
Where God is parting the waters, I'm walking through.
Passing Over

Deborah Brunt photoDeborah P. Brunt

God honors his commitments. Incredibly faithful, he keeps his appointments, whether we show up or not. Incredibly good, he goes to great lengths to make sure we show up, even when we're not aware that's what we're doing. If we seek HIM - simply, honestly, fully - he won't let us miss an appointment.
 
Ah, but how it delights him when we recognize, anticipate and intentionally keep his appointed times. How it delights us to find ourselves moving in sync with the LORD our God.
 
In Exodus 12:14, the Lord says of Passover, "Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as  a permanent ordinance" (NASU).
"Hallowed be your name"
In 1994, I was a wife and mom living in Corinth, Mississippi. I taught Sunday School and led our church women's missions organization. I wrote articles and books. For two years, I'd written a series of monthly prayer guides. In the process, I decided to do what many have done through the centuries: guide in praying through the Lord's Prayer.
 
Before I knew what hit me, God met me with breath-taking revelation. He illumined, not the entire prayer recorded in Matthew 6:9-13, but the very first petition. Suddenly, I saw the request we generally treat as introductory fluff: Hallowed be your name.
 
Those words don't sound earth-shattering, or life-changing or practical. They sound suspiciously like religious-speak. But, seeing them, I began to press into and cry out for what God was showing me.
 
I tried to describe what I was seeing, writing about it in my weekly newspaper column, as well as the monthly prayer guides. Each newspaper article ran the same week I wrote it. I spent four columns laboring to put into words what I didn't yet have words to express.
 
Those four articles ran the four Fridays in March, 1994. At sundown, the day after the fourth article appeared, Passover began.
 
That year, I had no clue that Passover fell when it did. Even if I'd known, I wouldn't have thought the Jewish celebration held any significance for me. But God had triggered a cry in me to honor his holy name. As I began expressing the cry that, 16 years later, still sounds from the depths of my being, I passed over into a radically new season, a radically new place.
"Strip down, start running - and never quit!"
Within two months, my husband accepted a job in Muncie, Indiana. In July, we and our two young daughters moved north. There, I made friends, missed the hills, loved the seasons and with my husband enjoyed our daughters' elementary years.
 
There, I experienced surprising grief and great frustration. The grief hit early and strong. It came from leaving behind family, lifelong friends and everything familiar. I embraced the grief, moved through it and eventually laid it naturally to rest.
 
The frustration started slowly and increased throughout our four-year sojourn in Indiana. It came from trying to go forward and not knowing the way. It came from running, full tilt, into a lot of slammed doors. It came from misplaced expectations and unfulfilled dreams.
 
As time passed and doors continued to slam, I prayed and pled and groveled, longing for breakthrough. Undaunted, God kept answering my deepest cry. He kept accomplishing exactly what he'd intended my Indiana season to accomplish.
 
My family had quickly crossed over to a new geographical location. But crossing over to a new way of thinking and feeling, passing over into a place where I honored God more fully, took time, much time. It required stripping off and throwing down what I called "essential" - and he called "excess baggage."
 
Have you seen the TV series Monk? Highly obsessive-compulsive, detective Adrian Monk notices details no one else sees. Yet sometimes, Monk gets distracted. In particular, he gets distracted by things that frustrate him. Trying to solve a murder in Mexico, he cannot function because he cannot get the only kind of water he will drink, a certain brand of bottled water. He sees the clues, but his intense thirst keeps him from understanding the significance of what he's seeing. A neat freak, he cannot function during a citywide garbage strike in San Francisco because of the stinky trash piling up all around.
 
Our four years in Indiana, God showed me things I desperately needed to see - things about myself and things about the church culture in which I'd lived all my life. Grief and frustration kept me from seeing all I was seeing. But God wasn't alarmed. He kept listening to my inner cry, the cry he himself continued to draw from me. And he kept working out his plan.
"I am not abandoning God's women"
In 1998, my family and I moved to Oklahoma. For me, the move brought a radical new season - and yet an extension of the immediately preceding one. In one way, I received a promotion. In another way, I entered a seven-year season of intense, prolonged self-denial. (I describe this season in my article, "The Seven-Year Fast," link below.) During those years, God worked even more intensely to rid me of things that needed to go and to show me things I needed to see.
 
Then, I passed over.
 
It happened this way. I had spent those seven years serving as a state denominational women's leader. The job description given me both by the Lord and my bosses was to challenge the women in the churches to know Christ, to grow in Christ and to echo his heart for the world. Further, I encouraged the women to work together with each other and under the authority of their church leaders to follow God fully.
 
Regretfully, the denominational structure isn't set up to help the women work together. Just the opposite. Yet we found that when the women in a church came together, asked God for help and listened to what he said, he made a way.
 
That sounds so obvious. Yet women leaders in the churches were desperate to hear it. We made a videotape of my teaching the women how to come together to seek and follow God. Within months, we sold copies in 24 states.
 
I told the women, "God is always pouring out new wine." I urged them to let him fashion new wineskins to hold what he was pouring out.
 
Maybe you can already see coming what caught me completely off guard.
 
God was moving, working. Women were coming together, seeking him, delighted at the new places he was leading. A few people began to feel threatened - first among them, women who liked the old structure and believed that I personally posed the greatest threat to its continuance. In early 2004, all hell broke loose.
 
For 15 months, everything that happened stunned and grieved and utterly decimated me. At last, I was ordered by those in authority to do the opposite of what God was telling me - to promote division among the women. I stayed until God said to go, pleading all the way for leaders to change their minds about the direction they were choosing.
 
My last official duty was to lead a women's retreat. The theme was "One." Theme Scripture: "My prayer for all of them is that they will be one, just as you and I are one, Father - that just as you are in me and I am in you, so they will be in us, and the world will believe you sent me"  (John 17:21 NLT).
 
Just before the retreat, I wrote one final appeal. It concluded, "I am not abandoning God's women. As He gives me grace, I will continue crying out to Him to make a way where there is none for His women to come together in Christ and to be pivotally involved in His kingdom purposes, to the glory of His name."
Celebrating the Feast
On Friday evening, April 22, 2005, I stood to begin the retreat. Before me sat a crowd of several hundred women. A handful were celebrating my exit. They had done everything in their power to bring it about. A handful loved me and knew what I had walked through: I had asked them to hold me accountable, to carry me when I couldn't go further, to help me finish well.
 
Most of the women who looked into my face had merely signed up for a retreat.
 
I introduced myself simply as "a bondslave of the Lord Jesus Christ." Then, I lost my voice. I squeaked through, literally, until the retreat ended the following afternoon. As we finished the cleanup and drove away from the retreat site, the sun set, and Passover started.
 
I spent that Passover week sick in bed. Two mornings, I made myself get up and go into work briefly - Tuesday, to clean out the few personal belongings left in my office, and Friday, for my exit interview. Saturday, April 30, my final official day in that position ended. So did Passover.
Researching the roots
And did I ever pass over. I catapulted to a new place - of healing and rest, joy and life, freedom and identity. (I describe that season in my article, "Lookin' Good," link below.)
 
In the new, spacious place God had taken me, I could see as never before. One thing I saw: How cruelly the enemy can fool people seeking to serve Jesus - by getting them to swear allegiance to something or someone they're passionate about, something or someone they associate with Jesus himself.
 
Ah, yes, I could see clearly. But I didn't yet begin to see the big picture.
 
In 2006, the Lord stirred me to start a search into the roots of what I had seen and experienced. The search lasted four years. Everything in my life had prepared me for what I began to uncover - and nothing had prepared me for it. Suddenly, I recognized the significance of things I'd seen in Indiana, things I'd experienced in Oklahoma, things I'd lived with all my life.
 
Throughout the search, I would press in for a few months, then back off for a few months. I had to allow time to process and to grieve the stunning things God was uncovering. I repeatedly asked, "Lord, why are you showing me this?" And he repeatedly reminded me that his purposes are always redemptive. He continually brought me back to the cry of my spirit, strengthened with power through his Spirit within: Hallowed be your name.
 
As in the days of the exodus, our Lord is working to set captives free and, in so doing, bring great honor to his holy name.
Let my people go
As I write, the sun is setting, and another Passover is beginning. For three months now, the Spirit of God has been preparing me to cross over into a new place. I do not know what the next season will look like. But I know what needs to be said. It's the same message that accompanied the first Passover:

"The Lord says, Let my people go, that they may worship me."

And today, at his appointed time, God has restored my voice.

 . . . . . . .
 
Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV ®. Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ®. All rights reserved worldwide. Also quoted: New American Standard Updated (NASU).
 
Heb 12:1. Do you see what this means - all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running - and never quit! (from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)
Related articles

WorshipingHands image
"The Seven-Year Fast"

"Lookin' Good"

"The Forgotten Prayer"

All three articles can also be found by clicking on the "Key Truths e-column archives" at keytruths.com
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