Raise your Hands and Rejoice!

For many years I wore my cross around my neck as a symbol of my love for God.  I wasn’t the kind of Christian who spoke about their Faith.  I never felt comfortable about speaking to people in-depth about my love for God.  I had a couple friends that I shared my inner most thoughts with but as far as everyone else I was very surface in my relationship with Jesus

I was a very carnal or I like to say surface Christian.  I believed with all my heart that Jesus died on the Cross for my sins.  I believed that God raised Jesus from death, three days after his Crucifixion and that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God in Heaven.  I would pray when I felt like I needed something, could be something material or something emotional.  I knew enough that I needed to pray and have communication with God, but I wouldn’t go as far to say we had a relationship.

I was in my mid-twenties, when I knew that I needed to go deeper with God than where I was.  I knew I needed to know him and for him to know me in a different way.   I was in school at the time and was just about to enter my first job in my career, and as God would have it, I worked among many believers.  I thought it was really cool how people would just openly discuss their relationships with God and share what was happening in their lives. 

I have come in and out of being a smoker in my life, and at this particular time, I was a smoker.  They had a designated smoking room at my job and I would go in there to smoke and became friends with a woman who also smoked while spending time in there.  I can’t even tell you how we became friends, but we did and she started talking to me about Jesus.  She started sharing with me her love and relationship with God and all the amazing things he’s done in her life.

We just started sharing our lives and our friendship took off from there.  She introduced me to a woman, Joyce Meyer, whom I still watch today, and I would say about six months after working there, I gave my life to Christ in my Childhood bedroom.  I was twenty-six at the time.

I began going to church, occasionally, with my new friends and trying, through my own efforts, to be what I thought a good Christian should be.  After some time I left that job for a better position closer to my home.  I entered into a very different atmosphere, one where you faith wasn’t openly known, and definitely not openly talked about, as I had grown accustomed too.  

As time had gone by I lost contact with my friends from my old job and began to lose the foundation that I thought I had started.  I was as the church world says a back slider.   I had experienced a death in my family that really shook me to my core and started to really distance myself from God.  I stopped praying, watching Joyce and any bit of reading I was doing was gone as well.   I was really struggling in my life and turned away from God.

After many years and the loss of my Grandmother, whom I cherish more than words can explain, I found myself at a new job with people who loved God.  I 

Became friends with one lady there and we started discussing God and what our faith is and where we stand in our faith.   I felt a strong pull to come back to God.  I had been through several failed relationships, broken friendships, change of jobs and still I wasn’t happy.  I wasn’t connected to anything.  I prayed occasionally but nothing that would really strengthen the inner part of me. 

I started to watch God based television again, reading God filled self-help books and praying.   I was attending conferences that were in my area and really feeling like things were starting to come together.   I was given a job offer that I couldn’t refuse and decided to take the offer.  I entered into another job, all still in the same field.  I had maintained a close friendship with the woman from my other job and we really began to share our lives with each other and our beliefs in God.   I have learned tremendously from her, and hopefully I have been of some use to her as well. 

I started going to church a couple years ago with my mom, which in itself is amazing, and really decided that I am going to make this God thing work.  I purposed myself to be the Christian I expected I should be.  Well, as I am sure you can all guess, it doesn’t work that way.   My ideas of what a Christian should be and God’s ideas of what a Christian should be were a little different. 

I decided instead of making myself crazy trying to fit into the mold of super Christian, I was going to let God mold me.  I decided that really what was important to me was having a relationship with God.  I wanted to know him.  I wanted to understand him and more than anything I wanted to have the life that Jesus died for me to have. 

This brings us to now.  I am still a work in progress, but not as much of a mess that I was in my mid-twenties.  I can honestly say I have a relationship with God that I wouldn’t give up for anything in the world.   I still have many faults and fall short every day but I have Jesus.  I have a redeemer who loves me and who died on the Cross so that I can be free.    I still struggle with life.  I struggle with understanding God’s timing, purpose and I struggle with patience.  My faith has grown but there is definite room to grow there, as well. 

I say all of this because in my reading tonight I saw myself.  Or I should say I saw the old me.  I was reading John 12:42 where it says, And yet (in spite of all this) many even of the leading men (the authorities and the nobles) believed and trusted in Him.  But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that (if they should acknowledge Him) they would be expelled from the synagogue; (verse 43) For they loved the approval and the praise and the glory that come from men (instead of and) more than the glory that comes from God.  (They valued their credit with men more than their credit with God.)

I knew this person.  I was this person.  I was the person for many years who was afraid of sharing their faith and because of that fear, I stifled my faith.  I didn’t permit my faith to grow and flourish.  I hid from it.  I hid because I was afraid of change and afraid of being out casted by my friends, because I was different.   I was looking for the approval of men, more than I was looking for the love of God.  I hid my light under a bushel for fear of not being accepted. 

I would go to church, which I truly enjoyed doing, and watch people during the praise and worship, which was my least favorite thing about church, and be in awe of people as they freely worshiped God.  I would see people crying, people raising their hands, people praying, dancing and singing to God.  I wanted so badly to be like them.  I wanted to throw caution to the wind and step out of myself.  I felt it in my spirit.  I felt all the things internally that they were expressing outwardly.   

I would stand for praise and worship and I could feel God telling me to lift my hands and praise him, but I never would.  I was once again, more concerned with the looks of things than I was about glorifying my God.   I was looking for approval from man instead of praising Jesus. 

I was watching one of my daily teaching programs and found myself singing, praising, dancing and lifting my hands in the privacy of my home and God spoke to me and said if you can do this here, why can’t you do this at church?  He got me!!  He was right!  If I could do this at home, why couldn’t I do this at church?   If I could weep at home why couldn’t I weep at church?  Church is to be our safety.  Church is to build us up and bring us into community with other believers; church is a safe place for expression.

I needed to break free of the approval of men.  I needed to let God’s light shine through me, on me and all around me.  One morning while getting ready for Church, God again, spoke to my heart and told me that I was going to go for prayer after the service.  I had no idea what I was going to prayer for or even what the service was about.  I immediately laughed and said, nope, I am not doing that.  For me to do that I would have to walk in front of the entire church and then go to someone and ask for prayer.  I would then have to tell them what I need prayer for.   None of those things had I signed up to do when I entered into this relationship with God. 

Guess who won?  That’s right.  I found myself standing in the front of the church, telling the pastor’s wife, of all people, that I needed prayer and she began to pray for me.  I could actually feel the Holy Spirit all over me.  I was electric and extremely hot all at the same time.  Oh, and of course, I cried.  Again, I tell this story to show you that hiding your relationship with God to have acceptance from man is only hurting you.

When you decide to worship in secret the God who wants to bless you in the open, you are only hurting yourself.  You are keeping yourself locked in a box of approval and approval of people who are not better than you are.  You are saying that I care more about what Man says of me than I do what God says of me.   We are devaluing the Cross and the man who hung on the Cross, Jesus. 

If we all kept our relationships with God a secret, how would any of us be able to share the love of God with the people around us?  How would God ever be able to use you if you are too ashamed to be his? 

Today, I cry if I need to cry, I praise if I need to praise, I raise my hands to worship my savior if I need to raise my hands.  I will proudly and boldly confess that I am a child of God and that the most important thing in my life is that relationship between me and God.  I will pray at work, I will spread the word of God at work or anywhere else I feel led to do so.   I no longer need to wear a cross around my neck to show that I am a Christian because the Love and Light of Jesus Christ shines through me!!  I am recognized now not by my jewelry but by my life!!