Man, I Hope you got a chance to watch Jackie Hill Perry tell her story. I think I might be late to the party on this one because Jackie has been telling her ugly for a while. She's been out shocking people with her willingness to shatter her reputation for the glory of God, and it is so very inspirational. Jackie could so easily go hide that deep somewhere. She's married now and a momma. She could be scared of people judging her marriage or her ability to parent or even her children's reaction to her past, but she is willing to lay that all down before the Lord and go do His work. Can you imagine how many people have found comfort, direction, hope in her testimony? Can you imagine how many people she would have missed if she had been ruled by fear?
Now, what about you (and me)? You may have never struggled with her exact walk or maybe you have, but we can all glean so much wisdom from this woman. There were so many "drop the mic" moments in the brief 25 minute video I shared, but there were themes in my favorite words of hers. Can we just talk for a minute about when she said, "So many of us have fear in being honest about where God has brought us from." Or, "We are comfortable with people seeing where we are now not recognizing there would be so much more fruitfulness if they understood how we got there." Or her favorite and mine, "Don't be so self centered to believe God just wants to use the things you do and not the things you did." Maybe this is most moving to those of us who do have something really ugly behind us because we can relate to the fear of being exposed. Truth be told, even if we don't have a crazy story, all of us have parts of our history that we are not proud of. But the point is, if you are here with me, the Lord redeemed you from them and no one will ever understand how big your God is if they never get a chance to see just what he was working with in the first place. This takes courage, and vulnerability, and it can be scary, but Jackie is a picture of being willing to roll those dice and let the Lord decide where they land.
On this same note, Jackie concludes by talking about some of the different ways the enemy might convince us to keep silent. One of them being our fear of what people might think of you. She then proceeds to lay out what they might do...which, you know, is a fun, worst case scenario kind of gig we all tinker with, but she goes on to respond to these fears with the Gospel. She said it absolutely the best so:
They might:
"Reject you - cool, the gospel says you're accepted.
Shame you - cool, God put that on himself on the cross - you're free
Treat you like you are what you use to be - the Gospel says you are a new creation."
Now, it was important for Jackie to note and it is key to this whole ministry that all of our stories point back to the Savior. We didn't somehow redeem ourselves. We didn't chose him. As Jackie says all of her change of heart about her sin was "motivated by the Holy Spirit". She didn't will herself enough to walk away from sin. The Lord was moving and prodding her to "see reality and lean towards believing it". She wants us to understand that our stories are not ours anyway. He allowed us to have a story that we could then share to make more of His name...not ours.
I could go on and on about her description of faith and repentance, about her revelations in regard to only being able to walk like Jesus with Jesus, or about the hope she found just on the other side of condemnation, but there are some things you have to soak up on your own. So, be encouraged to not let fear silence your God story...as Jackie says, "It doesn't belong to you" anyway.
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