The Growing Season

In Kyria’s Encouraging Words daily online devotional, author Diane Eble recently wrote about the need to create the right conditions for spiritual fruitfulness. Citing Galatians 5:22—"But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!"—Eble reminds readers: “Fruit is the result of right conditions, including enough light, the right amount of water at the right time, pulling weeds regularly, and enriching the soil.”

For me, Lent has always been the best growing season. From Ash Wednesday to Easter, this 40-day period mirrors a planting, cultivating, and harvesting cycle. On Ash Wednesday, we confess our sins—till the ground, turning it over to inspect the quality of the soil and prepare it for new growth. During the 40 days following this groundbreaking, we engage in practices, such as daily Bible reading, prayer, personal sacrifice, and service, that are the equivalent of shining light, watering, pulling weeds, and fertilizing the soil of our souls.

Of course, Lent isn’t the only time we can experience new growth. The Spirit works in each of us throughout our lives. I am, however, grateful that the Church provides for a regular growth cycle, much the same as farmers prepare and plant the soil in spring and harvest their crops in late summer.

As Eble reminds us, Galatians 5:22 provides a spiritual check-up: Are we seeing any evidence in our lives of fruitfulness—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? I’ve been thinking more and more about what “plants” I need to grow this year. Last year during Lent I focused on self-control. This year I sense the Spirit calling me to cultivate love.

Ask Sheila Walsh your questions on trusting God when you're afraid.

Do you find it difficult to trust God when you are afraid—and now you're finding it difficult (if not impossible) to trust God? Send your questions about "trusting God when you are afraid" to Sheila by CLICKING HERE. Some of the questions received will be chosen for Sheila to answer live as part of a nationwide radio special coming this spring to a radio station near you. Questions must be received by February 26, 2010. If your question is chosen you will be contacted using the email or phone number you provide on or around March 5 with details pertaining to the radio special taping.

Click here for a free excerpt of Beautiful Things Happen When a Woman Trusts God!

The Lenten Soil

Before I went to college, I had a cloudy understanding of Lent. I knew it involved giving something up. Usually chocolate. Not my idea of a good time. But beyond believing that it was legalistic—and maybe even a little masochistic—I didn’t know much.

My Lenten ignorance ceased my sophomore year when I started attending a church that observed Lent. So in the name of “taking one for the team,” I decided to give up—you guessed it—chocolate. I, with my penchant for melodrama, braced myself for a stark and thorny 40-day journey. I survived.

My faith was not profoundly altered during that Lenten season. I didn’t experience moments of sublime communion with Christ. But something small emerged from my heart.

Weakness.

Not from hunger or emotional trauma or exhaustion. I have rarely known weaknesses such as these. This was a weakness that grew out of a simple act: My feeble hands trembling, I gave God this sapling of an offering. Just chocolate. But something that I wanted, that I could no longer control.

The Holy Spirit rooted this small plant within me. But I had prepared my heart for him—a rich soil in which to grow. Putting ourselves in a posture of weakness is scary, but it is necessary for real growth. And like any plant that is cultivated, God can transform weakness from a feeble, shivering wisp into something bold and verdant.

Lent is all about weakness. It’s about walking with Christ, remaining in him (John 15:3) as he enters the desert for testing. We, too, experience this testing, this “desertness,” as we relinquish control of some of the trappings that bind our hearts from freely giving ourselves to Christ. This journey ultimately prepares us to meet Christ during the stark tragedy of his death, face our sinful role in this reality, and of course, celebrate the victory of Christ’s resurrection.

This year, Lent begins on Wednesday, February 17. I encourage you to give something to Christ during these 40 days, whether it’s chocolate, TV, radio, Facebook, or something creative. Give gladly, with the knowledge that Christ can take your frail sacrifice and cultivate your heart for growth and abundance.

What chains you from stillness and remaining in Christ? How will you prepare the rocky soil of your heart for the death and resurrection of Jesus?

Women and Porn

For years I’ve heard the stereotype that pornography is only an issue for men. Church accountability groups and sermons on the dangers of pornography have long been directed at men, while it’s been assumed that women don’t deal with those types of issues.

But research is starting to show that pornography isn’t only a man’s problem. Marnie Ferree, a licensed marriage and family therapist, is a former sex addict and director of Bethesda Workshops, a organization that offers faith-based clinical intensive treatment for sexual addiction and co-addiction. In a recent online article, “Women Struggle, Too (with Sexual Addiction),” she suggests that “one-third of sex addicts are women, and eventual information will reveal women comprise nearly one-half of those who are sexually addicted.”

But even with these new findings, women struggling with pornography still seems to be news to us. A subject that used to be “a guy thing” is trapping hundreds of women into a mentality that says, I am alone and abnormal, an outcast. “The enormous shame that surrounds sexual sin is experienced exponentially by female strugglers,” writes Ferree. Few women are willing to risk the possible judgment …”

Katie (not her real name) first started looking into this issue five years ago when she confessed to her college women’s Bible study that she’d been struggling with an addiction to internet pornography. God had been speaking to her for several years, saying, Tell someone. Just tell someone about it, Katie. Before she confessed she was totally trapped in the lie that this was too secret, too personal ever to share with anyone. She’d never heard a woman speak about an addiction to internet pornography, and when she finally did decide to confess—it was a sermon specifically directed to the men in the congregation that moved her to action. Thankfully, God moves in many ways to restore us to himself.

Katie’s specific struggle was not unique, especially for her age group. Ferree reports that

A growing number of women are looking online at the more traditional kind of pornography. Generally speaking, most women who choose visual material are younger females, ages 18–34. This generation was raised in a media-saturated culture and is more accustomed to visual stimuli. Advances in neuroscience indicate that our media-driven culture is literally altering the human brain—and not just men’s. Today’s young women seem equally visually oriented. It is no surprise, then, that females are drawn to pornographic pictures.

And so, a sin categorized as a man’s struggle because of men’s “visual” nature can no long apply. Young women are now included in this categorization. So what do we do?

Many Christian women feel trapped in their sexual sin because there’s no outlet in the church for women to feel safe on this front. In other words, the church needs to catch up. The internet, cable TV, magazines—all have opened many new avenues to sexual encounters; now the church needs to respond by opening clear avenues for men and women to confront this growing issue in a safe, forgiving environment.

Growing up in the church, I’m thankful for the women leaders who took us aside in junior high and talked to us about sex. It was brave of them to confront the issue with us. Now we need to do the same with addiction. Not only do we need to start talking about sexual addiction to the grown women in our church, but we need to decide when it’s time to talk to our children about resisting the temptation of pornography and other sexual sins, boys and girls. I imagine the internet and the media will only become vaster and more personally accessible (without accountability) as they and we grow older.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul reminded us, “But [God] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” As women leaders, let’s establish that safe place where women can come and let Christ’s power rest on them without fear or shame.

Some Thoughts on the Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad

When I saw the much-hyped Tim Tebow ad during Sunday's Super Bowl, I was struck by two things:

1) It did not deserve its prelude of tremendous hype and controversy. (If you’re not familiar with this controversy, check out these articles from ABC News, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post.) I can't imagine that anyone was offended by the ad itself. While I realize the pro-life message and the ad’s sponsor, Focus on the Family, can be controversial, the ad itself was not. In fact, without all the pregame hype, most people probably wouldn’t have even taken notice of it. It didn’t preach or advocate, and actually managed to say almost nothing but simply encouraged people to visit the Focus on the Family website for "The Tebow story." Seriously, what’s the big deal?

2) Tim Tebow said very little. Most of the talking was done by Tim’s mom, who hinted at her own story—and who is not a celebrity in her own right. This surprised me, I guess because she’s not a celebrity, and because it was billed as “the Tim Tebow ad.” But as I thought about it, I realized I was also surprised because I rarely hear women speak out against abortion to a national audience. And I wonder why.

While abortion is an issue that affects men—after all, it takes a father to make a baby, and fathers certainly experience loss—let’s be honest: ultimately a woman is the one directly, physically affected by the decision to carry a baby or end a pregnancy. And in the public square, abortion is treated almost entirely as a women’s issue. Men’s voices have almost no credibility in the larger conversation about abortion. So why are most of the high-profile pro-life spokespeople men?

I don’t have an answer for this, and I won’t attempt to bring any kind of order to the disagreements over how we should protest, fight, discourage, or forgive abortion. Maybe women are more likely to empathize with other women who face the terrifying circumstances that can lead someone to choose abortion. Maybe this empathy causes them to hesitate to enter a conversation so full of anger and so often shrill. The women I know seem less likely to engage in political debate over abortion and more likely to engage in an opportunity for Christlike compassion. But I do know that women can speak and act on this issue with a level of credibility and compassion that men can’t. So why are the public voices so often men’s?

Kate Gosselin and Starting Over

What does "starting over" really mean for Christians, and how does this vastly differ from how celebrity culture define it? We at Kyria want to share a great article on celebrity and biblical redemption which was posted on our sister site, Leadershipjournal.net. We hope you will share your thoughts with us below.

Brought into Being

Who am I? What am I made for? What defines me?

These are ego-centric questions, yet ones we feel we must ask ourselves—and hone in on an answer—especially if we’re to be effective and influential individuals and Christians. But Mark Galli, in his article “I Love, Therefore You Are,” argues that this is precisely our problem: We are asking ourselves these questions, spending our energies in introspection, determining to bring ourselves into defined beings in order to have something solid to offer the world. This, he claims, is not the pursuit for which we were created.

We are taught in many ways not to define ourselves in relation to other people. The compare-and-contrast game can be a dangerous and hindering one. Scripture says we were knit in our mothers’ wombs (Psalm 139:13). This presumes that we are each unique and choicely created directly by the hands of God and (seemingly) independent of one another. From another angle, Jesus tells us to remove the plank from our own eye before pointing out the speck in someone else’s (Luke 6:42). We’re not to define ourselves by finding a contrast in someone else. That is an unhealthy (and often inaccurate) way to search for definition and personal quality.

So we are created uniquely, and we aren’t to feel superior or inferior by looking at the people around us. The bent part of our nature, then (hand in hand with the overwhelming western belief in the power in the individual), concludes that we must camp out inside and discover our essence, talents, and even weaknesses on our own. Yet another place where we (go figure) have got it wrong.

I first read Galli’s article in the spring of 2007, soon after my fiancée had broken off our engagement and determined that he didn’t actually love me. As is so often the case in raw and stinging times, I began to recognize that much of me had been lost in that relationship as it had progressed—there was much I had attempted to change and suppress and accentuate.

In this new state—all that I’d been chiseling off and glopping on having been rejected, thoroughly—I found myself utterly at the mercy of the friends who sat with me evening after evening on the screened in porch. It was as if my ears were wide open tunnels to my soul. I heard these sisters and brothers express to me what they knew was true about me, what they missed, what they knew was still there. These people were—quite overtly—defining me. I was very lost; these godly people found me—for me. I began to understand that on my own and in my own pursuit of myself, I actually was nothing. The reality is that we are only in relation to the people around us. That is how the triune God created us—in his relational image. And what a most blessed way to be.

Galli’s piece came with poignancy, because inside, I was learning every word of it already: “Our primary duty in life is not to find ourselves, to develop our gifts, or to make sense of life. Instead, we are called to love others so that they can come into existence, while they do the same for us.”

As we begin or continue in ministry, let’s keep this inherent reality always in mind. Our most essential role in someone’s life may be to simply tell her who she is, for “we share in the mission of [the] Trinity, which is to create and sustain other beings in love.”