Make Me Bold

I’ve been wanting to share what I wrote for months now. I’ve been wanting to tell the story of how God reminded me of my purpose and just how badly His Truth is needed in our broken world. I’ve been wanting to be bold.

But I haven’t. 

Because being bold is scary. Being bold is not always welcomed. And being bold sometimes involves calling out the brokenness. 

But if there was ever a time to be bold, it is now…

Every year I resolve to be more focused in the weeks leading up to Christmas. More focused on the birth of Christ than the commercial side of the season. More focused on the people than the stuff. More focused on the abiding with Him rather than the doing. 

Every year, I pray for something to interrupt me if I’m getting off track. And most years, that interruption is unfortunately necessary and thankfully received, usually through a newly discovered Christmas song or a moving church service or an Advent devotion that hits right where I need it. 

But this past year, God used something much more unexpected.

I purposefully hadn’t been on social media much. In an effort to protect my own mental state and maintain healthy relationships with those I love, I’ve taken a step back. And for the most part, I haven’t missed it. 

But then the week before Christmas, wanting nothing more than to avoid the demands I would find upon walking through the door to my house after dropping my children off at school, something drew me to click on the blue square on my phone (you know, the one with the white “f”?) while still sitting in my minivan in our garage. I began to scroll. And up popped what was supposed to be a “feel good” story about a 61-year old woman who courageously and selflessly became a surrogate mother so her son and his husband could have a baby. And she gave birth to her own granddaughter. 

Wow. That’s a lot to unpack.

Curious to know what the general consensus would be of the other readers of this headline, I began to read through some of the comments. They seemed to be equally split down the middle: some applauded all involved for creating such beautiful life from such a place of love. Some expressed their complete disgust over the situation and lamented the possible ridicule and identity issues this little girl would face as she grew up and learned the story of how she “came to be”. And the sides went at it. One reader commented “How could you possibly be so critical of a situation where a child is born into such love? Some of you people really need a hug.” 

I couldn’t read any further. 

Because once again, as it had many times during the year prior, the truth of our current world smacked me across the face: we are in such desperate need of Jesus.

We live in a world where we’re told it’s okay to choose whether or not a life is worthy to be lived before that life even has a chance to exist outside of the mother’s womb and yet this same world applauds creating life in completely unnatural circumstances – even going to the lengths of a 61-year old woman, long past menopause, giving birth simply because that particular life is deemed “wanted”.

We live in a world where we feel our biggest platform and vehicle for spurring change is a social media app which is controlled by other broken people, purposefully showing information it determines to be important and hiding others it does not. And in this vehicle, we reach across cyberspace and slam others up against a wall for having a differing opinion, forgetting that those others are fellow loved children of God in desperate need of grace. In desperate need of knowledge and reminders of the Truth. 

We live in a world where many think it’s not possible to disagree with someone and still love them.

Suddenly the demands that waited for me on the other side of the door to my house seemed like a cakewalk compared to the weight which had settled over me. 

I pulled myself from the van, made my way to our kitchen table where my Bible and an Advent devotional waited for me. And I sought Him. 

And I cried.

I cried for this world. I cried for those men, that grandmother, that baby, those who had felt the need to comment – those on both sides – and I prayed for Jesus to come. 

What happened next was nothing short of God’s ever-present, unchanging Truth washing over me. Some would say He spoke to me. To that I would say Of course He did, considering I sat with His words open in front of me. Regardless of how you want to define it, this is what I heard:

But wait, my child. The time has not fully come.

But why?, my heart cried in reply. I am so saddened by the evil that surrounds us all. I am so frustrated by the endless discussion of who is right and who is wrong. I am so angry at the way You have been rejected. And I am so tired of fighting.

But yet, there are those who have not yet heard. There are those who need to be reminded. For I have lambs that have not yet returned to the sheep pen (John 10:16) and I cannot end this world until they have. I love these people whom I have created (John 3:16). And you do not need to be consumed by the evil which sin creates (Lamentations 3:22).

(Silence.)

I’d love to say I felt comforted. However, a set day and time for the end may have been the only thing which would have accomplished that. But we know that is not how God works (Mark 13:32). No, comfort is not what I felt. 

I’d love to say I felt motivated. Motivated to get up and go. Anywhere, to anyone and everyone to spread the Good News. But no, I was too overwhelmed for that. 

Perhaps the only way to describe how I was changed is refocused. You see, the night before I panic-bought dress pants for my boys to wear to their Christmas program, bound and determined not to have less-than-perfect looking children in the church. The evening prior to that I had spent hours in the kitchen, preparing confections and cookies of multiple kinds to pack up for the teachers and ran out of time for my son to read a book he had been asking me to listen to. This frantic kitchen work had resulted in more dishes than I could keep up with which culminated into frustration with my husband for not being more willing to help. One of my current biggest stressors was the pile of gifts we had purchased for our children which I needed to get wrapped and placed under the tree. Blessing upon blessing which I had used to create more work for myself had taken my eyes off of Him. But those tasks were easily justified because all of these “things” were for Christmas, which I know are ultimately for Him…right? 

Meanwhile, the spiritual war was (and currently is) still waging. A 61-year old grandmother was giving birth to her grandchild. For her son who was married to another man. And people were arguing about whether or not this was an act of love. And whether or not another person’s opinion about it made them worth loving.

Yikes.

And I had been so consumed with my preparations that I hadn’t even been thinking about the need to make Him known.

I want to be the person, jumping up and down in the crowd, hand waving in the air, shouting “Send me!” But I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what that looks like in my current life circumstances. Yet I am confident God will show me. For He has already shown me what it doesn’t:

It does not look like engaging with strangers (or family and friends) on a social media app where true conversation cannot take place. 

It does not look like avoiding loved family and friends because we cannot agree and therefore, conversation is too uncomfortable. 

It does not mean burying myself in other activities which I can justify as “good” while ignoring the task He has called me to (Matthew 28:19-20). 

It does not mean losing heart, giving up all Hope and doing nothing while I wait for Him to return. 

For as just in my Christmas preparations, there can be action in the waiting.

In that given moment, just days before we would celebrate His birth, it looked like putting aside my looming to-do list and letting His words flow out of me into this story. Because there is no greater calling than to speak His Truth in love.

There is a reason Jesus has not yet returned. I have WORK to do. You have WORK to do. He has called us all to be bold. May we all answer that calling in the way God directs us each uniquely to, taking heart and continuing to pray, “Come, Lord Jesus, Come!”

“Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart…We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed…Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4, select verses