When One Question Changes Everything

Posted on Sep 12, 2019 Topic : Men's Christian Living, Women's Christian Living
Posted by : Lisa Brockman

I had worked hard to restore peace after shattering my parents' dreams by choosing to follow the biblical God. For 25 years, I had navigated the waters of how much I could talk about my faith and maintain peace.

But after sharing my story at an event, a literary agent named Robert approached me.

“Have you ever thought about writing your story,” he asked.

My heart leapt, while my stomach churned.

By now my relationship with my Mormon family was mostly comfortable, and I liked it that way. I could talk about God and His work in my life, so long as I steered clear of the doctrinal differences that would cause waters to rage.

Still I recognized that through Robert, Jesus was inviting me to follow Him into terrifying waters. I would never have boarded this boat had it not been plopped beneath me. Leaving Mormonism had been the most excruciating journey of my life. Now it felt like God was asking me to do that all over again.

Though God had given me a story to tell, I knew telling it would cost me comfort, people’s approval, control, and power.

That is so like Jesus to invite me to open my hands and offer Him my disordered loves so that He could fill that space with more of His love, releasing me to love more fully.

He extended the same invitation to the woman caught in adultery and the woman at the well, to the rich man and the tax collector, to everyone He encountered—knowing their second loves could never satisfy their thirsty souls. In return, He offered Himself—living water which will always satisfy.

I wanted to drink more deeply of Him and trust He is the loving, faithful God I’ve known Him to be. I wanted to unfurl my fingers and invite Him to have His way in me and in my family. At the same time, I felt like a kindergartner in the school of faith.

As I departed from Mormonism, Luke 14:26 anchored me. “You cannot be my disciple, unless you love me more than you love your father and mother, your wife and children, and your brothers and sisters” (CEV).

It was beckoning me once again.

So I climbed into the boat to share my story. I wanted to leap out of that vessel many times along the way.

Always Luke 14:26 would come back to me, gently convicting me of my temptation to keep relational peace as a higher love than following Jesus, who is peace. By His grace alone, I kept writing the story He has authored through my life.

As I’ve created space for Him to reign in places of my soul to which I’d not given Him access before, His love and light are radiating in a way which brings awe. I have navigated painful encounters, which have been the impetus for a deeper release of second loves.

More than anything, I’m experiencing God to be one who faithfully goes before me and provides mind-boggling redemptive encounters with the people I love. Not only am I being released to love Him and others more fully, but I’m creating space for Him to reveal His power and love in ways I never would have seen had I not accepted His invitation.

It causes me to wonder in what other corners of my soul I’ve allowed my disordered loves to hinder His light from shimmering brightly.