Stepping into Joy

I went to the SAFA retreat this weekend. It was beautiful. The weather was wonderful, the peace was overflowing, the teaching dug deep, making me think of all the ways my joy is robbed...and I let it happen. I am continually caught up in the ways the Lord seems to tie all the little lessons, teachings, preachings together into one cohesive whole. The puzzle pieces are really coming at me fast and furious this last couple of months. It is difficult to figure out just where they all go, but it is obvious that they all fit in the same picture.

Pastor has been preaching from 1 Kings 17 about dry brooks and empty barrels, and how they were actually the answer to the needs of the prophet and a widow woman, saving both their lives, in fact.

Sunday School today was about Job and the severe trial he went through, and how that trial served to show the true integrity of his heart. Imagine learning you have lost all you owned and all your children in less than say, a 10 minute span. The words that lept off the page at me as I studied were, "...and while he was still speaking..."

The sessions of teaching during the retreat were all aimed at identifying ways that Satan comes at us, stealing our joy. Remember, the joy of the Lord is our STRENGTH. My breath was just taken away as she spoke about her daughter. My heart broke for her and for the daughter who dealt with and caused such upheaval in that family. A devastating blow. "...and while he was still speaking..." I found myself thinking about Tim. I have one natural son, Timothy Aaron (Aaron) and one unofficially adopted son, Timothy Karl (Tim). He is gay. He has been so for many years. He was gay when I met him. It has been something he has struggled with, fought against, succumbed to, tried to ignore...if you were to meet him, you would think he's gay. He's married. To a woman. He's still gay. And he's still my unofficially adopted son.

I don't really agree with the idea that people are born with a sexual orientation. I think Satan has many subtle tricks and lies that we fall into, one of them being, "this is what I am, I can't fix it." But how many of us who are straight struggle with the same type of thinking? "I'm fat, that's just the way it is." "I'm just too shy to_____." "I'm not good at much of anything." "I'm not enough to keep a husband's love." But we believe the lie, and so that makes it our reality.

In this time and in this culture, we risk the chance of being sued, defamed, or physically harmed for "bashing." Unless, of course, one is a Christian. Then it's ok. Having been on the receiving end of some of the milder forms of ridicule individually, and identified with the larger body that takes some of the more severe forms of persecution, I find it hard to understand how anyone who names the name of Jesus in on breath, can with the next stereotype and slur those who don't think like we do. If I really do want to win the world, loving in spite of the warts and dirt and stink will be the path I'm called to take. It's what Jesus did with me.

I left early this morning to be able to be back to my own church for morning worship, so I didn't get to hear the last session of the retreat. I pray that the ladies who remained will be able to open their spirits up to the love and joy the Lord has for each of them. I pray that the shock of that one session will have the effect the Lord intended; that we will be skaken out of our complacency and into the world of hurting people where we can show them that there IS joy in the living when the King is on our side.