Passing Over
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Deborah 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).
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"Hallowed be your name"
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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.
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"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.
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"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."
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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.
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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.
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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 |
"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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