This past January, transitioning out of full time school at Tyndale and into full time work was really hard for me. Most of the difficulty that I struggled with was my fault and throughout that time I really realized that. I made the horrible mistake of not getting fully plugged into a church the four years I was at Tyndale because I made the excuse to myself that Tyndale was already in itself the only community I needed, and so I didn't go out of my way to really sow into a church and build community outside Tyndale. I have been in church ministry my whole life at home in Kingston and moving into my own new church in Toronto just wasn't comfortable for me because I knew I would have to commit to so many new things if I were to really plant myself into a church here. I did attend church throughout Tyndale but I went back and forth between churches, with no desire to commit, thinking I was already being fed and pouring out enough where I was.
Coming out of Tyndale really messed me up because I saw how much not doing that affected my current situation. Leaving Tyndale I didn't have a home church, I wasn't plugged into any other accountability outside the friends I had there and I was feeling so alone, and so miserable.
I struggled for months with this and the easiest thing for me would have been to get up and find a church. It was easier said to myself than done. I knew I was struggling with shame and guilt and I knew God didn't want me to be feeling that way about everything. The conviction from the Holy Spirit was " Kayla, commit yourself somewhere and find a church, plug yourself in" but I immediately took that conviction the wrong way and have struggled with committing to a church the past year not because of a fear anymore of committing but because of guilt and shame.
The past month was when the Holy Spirit spoke to me about it in a new way and really started to work within that area of my heart. At a church service a few weeks ago He told me that there were some places in my heart that were holding misplaced guilt and shame. It's crazy that we can become blinded to it and those areas that were once light that we knew about can become dark and forgotten when we choose to hide them and forget about them.
He reopened my eyes to that shame in my heart again for not being committed to a church for so long. He told me that He wanted to give me a church, a church community and ministry opportunity there, but He wanted to give it to me as a gift. A grace gift given to me out of His love for me! I had never seen it like that before and I was so confused and I didn't understand what He meant when He told me that. For the past year, the reason why I wanted to find a church ( if I were to be brutally honest with myself and Father God) was because I felt unfruitful and unproductive, I felt like I was unuseful and less than I was before while I was plentiful in ministry . I felt kind of worthless and like I had fallen down a few steps on this imaginary ladder of God's approval or something. I have learned so much within this dry season of learning myself in His love and my identity IN Him without doing anything at all and practicing how to just rest in Him without striving rather than just knowing it in my heart.
He has been showing me that that intention for wanting to find a church and all the things that comes with that was not out of authentic obedience but out of guilt and shame and condemnation. He wants to instead give me this opportunity for growth, ministry and whatever else as a gift instead of a "this is what you have to do", but He wants me to be in the place to be able to receive it the way He wants me to receive it. Instead of telling me "Kayla this is what you must do for me", I have been hearing it more as a " Kayla, I love you so much that I want to give you this to bless you and in you feeling and taking this love from me you will naturally just want to give back to me with it". As I was sitting in my room the other night telling this to a friend, she asked me " how does doing something you know you must do be a gift when it should just be an act of reverence and obedience?"
Yah, just learning from God as Father that He doesn't want us to love him out of dutiful service, he wants my heart to be full of love for Him. That's all, that's all he wants from me. Intimacy. And fruitfulness precedes it. If I am so in love with Him and focusing just on that, all obedience , submission and fruit will come afterwards and I guess I have just got so caught up in wanting to see the fruit that I have ignored seeking the intimacy first this past year. His grace gift to me with what I have been seeking in a church is His way of showing me how much He loves me and if I am seeing every opportunity to love Him, serve him and fall deeper in love with Him like that, I will be seeing His true Father heart for me instead of seeing Him as this mean demanding Father.
This is just a little bit of what I have been learning, the biggest struggle right now for me and how he has been teaching my heart through it. Hoping it speaks to redeemed hearts needing truth of His real Father heart in areas where obedience and submission are trying to come out of places of condemnation and shame.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Psalm 51:17
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Romans 8:1-4
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