Full Circle

Full Circle (by Leslie Lindsay)

I can remember, more clearly than just about any other event in my life (which really isn't saying a lot with my very lacking and fragmented memory), driving down I-95 heading to North Carolina to host a trade show for an importing business that I had set up to fund my desire to travel the world. I had been privileged to participate on a couple of US Congressional delegations to several countries within Asia with my father through his position as the US Navy/Marine Corps Liaison to the US House of Representatives here in Washington, DC. Hoping to capitalize on the incredible contacts and connections I had because of his position, as well as attempt to satiate my unquenchable thirst for the MORE that I just knew was out there somewhere, I traveled the world buying merchandise to bring back to the US to sell at trade shows and via retail sales in people's homes. The MORE kept beckoning me ever onward to find just what this MORE was....

I had always been a truth-seeker and was in search of freedom and life from as early an age as I can recall. I wanted escape and freedom from something that I didn't even know I was enslaved to. Because of this deep and profound hunger within me, I took many questionable paths. Having very little to go on in terms of examples of people around me that were walking in what I so desperately craved, I set off in search of this MORE - and to try and satisfy this hunger and thirst - through every cistern and well my ravenous heart could find. Through dating all types of guys (fighter pilots, surfers, business tycoons, politicians, bad boys, musicians, athletes, and just about any other type I can't even recall), promiscuity, drinking, drug use (thankfully never anything too hard nor destructive on my body), touring with world-famous rock bands (at the absolute height of their careers: Bryan Adams in 1985 with his Sold Out Heaven Tour), living the "dream life" in California hobnobbing with celebrities of many kinds, all the way to my newfound quest into the new frontier of an importing business, I searched absolutely everywhere I could think to search. Yet I still came up empty. Every. Single. Time. 

As I was driving down to North Carolina, I clearly heard God say in my spirit: "have you seen enough yet?". Absolutely exhausted and devoid from looking for what I simply could not find in all my now decades of searching, I instantly replied with a desperate "Yes!!!"  

His simple reply to me: "Then return to Me." 

Even though I had grown up in a home that professed faith and belief in Jesus Christ and had attended some type of a supposed Bible-believing church my whole life up until I left for college, I clearly hadn't ever truly met and fully encountered This One that was now beckoning me back unto Himself - despite several times of supposed "conversion" experiences (mostly an emotional response to some skilled preacher) in my adolescence and young adulthood. I think I was even baptized a time or two. So, depending on your theology, I may or may not have been "saved". I do truly believe that my young heart had sincerely asked this breathtaking and brilliant God through His Son, Messiah Yeshua, to come and live inside of me. I just hadn't nurtured, loved, and protected this young seedling of faith within me. Therefore lacking theology, limited Bible knowledge and spiritual discernment sadly allowed the ways of this world to entice and lure my heart away from my One True and First Love. 

Having absolutely NO idea what this beckoning of God "then return to Me" meant, I returned home from my trade show in NC and began attending every single church in the Northern Virginia, Washington, DC, and Maryland area that I could scope out and attend. Thankfully, as "fate" would have it, my cherished and glorious husband had just become the Worship Leader/Youth Pastor (fresh out of Oklahoma Baptist Church in Shawnee, Oklahoma) at my parent's very dysfunctional Southern Baptist Church here in Virginia. Because he was "taken" with a girlfriend from college and I was ALL about God and God alone at the time, Jim was a phenomenal mentor to help me come to know and love this One who had finally wooed and won my heart forever. Prior to meeting Jim, I had decided I wanted to be and remain single after dating almost type of man there was to date on the planet - including quite a few knuckleheads as well as incredible and wonderful men! I just didn't think I would fit with another soul for an entire lifetime. As the months went by and I was more and more drawn back to this little but very influential church (and their gorgeous and godly new worship pastor) it soon became very apparent that God had ordained and orchestrated our meeting and desired us to become one flesh and start a family. So after very kindly and gently breaking things off with his prior relationship, Jim asked me out and the rest is, as they say, history.  As of this coming Friday, we will have had a fantastic, epic, hard, sometimes monotonous, and yet always a buoyant (even flambuoyant sometimes!) life together for over 33 years. Thank you, God, for You - and for dysfunctional Southern Baptist churches. 

Jim and my life and story these last three and a half decades can (and hopefully will!) fill the pages of a long and very exciting book someday, should our Lord tarry, but my thoughts today are more leaning toward the circular nature of my precious relationship with my Lord and Savior. I started this journey and newfound relationship with Jesus looking for Him through people, through churches, retreats and ministries. And even though I have gleaned MIGHTILY from just about every soul I've encountered along the way, I've also picked up A LOT of bad, lacking, and therefore impotent (or even worse yet - deceptive) theology - as well as many, many misconstrued ideas of just who my Lord and Savior truly is as well as what I've been put here on Planet Earth to do in "such a time as this". 

Thankfully Jesus met me in my quest for more of Him through all these years of navigating ministry being a pastor's wife, a homeschooling mother to four amazing children as well as owning and running a home care company built upon loving and serving seniors that want to stay in their homes as they age. All of these roles left very little time for pressing in for the MORE but, gratefully, Jesus wouldn't allow my heart to stay empty and dry for too long before bringing me fresh and extravagant periods of refreshing in Him as well as learning who I was - as well as who I am not - all along the way. It has been a rocky, tumultuous, and oftentimes very lonely journey. But I now know the ‘Pearl of Great Price’ that Jesus talked about. I have had much warfare set against me walking in His love, but this makes every single second of pain and suffering I've walked through absolutely pale in comparison to the heights of love, depths of peace, and joys of life I am now experiencing. Even (and especially) in the midst of this ever-encroaching darkness that is rapidly and rampantly covering our world and earthly domain. 

I realized today that I've come full circle. I'm no longer looking for God through His people, His Church nor His movements, but rather through the Bible and through MY relationship with Jesus alone as is directed and led by the Ru'ach Hokadesh (also known as the Holy Spirit). I am no longer literally traveling around the planet, looking and actively seeking some distant MORE, but am finding Him (or better yet, He's finding me) in the quiet place. In the stillness. Alone and in His Word.  

This is a good thing too because being a truth seeker (and therefore a truth teller) doesn't always engender love and warm fuzzies from the world around me. I've pissed off and alienated more people than I can possibly recall and recount despite my deepest and sincerest desire NOT to do so. My desire has always been to inform, to invite others into the depths of a relationship with Christ, as well as warn about what is coming in the very near future. I am a "watchman" to my core. These warnings haven't always gone well and have often gone very tragically wrong. But I'm a work in progress, thankfully, and He will finish what He has started in my life and story.  

My journey of late (the past four or five years) has been trying to learn to communicate the truths I'm walking in more skillfully, effectively, and less impassioned. I began to more fully wake up to the web of lies and deception we've all been born into probably 9 years or so ago. My comfortable little world was absolutely rocked and devastated when I learned of the staggering numbers and horrors of the human/child sex trafficking rings. These rings have been running rampant through our societies and world dating back to ancient Babylon. There are horrifying evils occurring under our very own noses and watches through the many, many secret - and therefore subversive - societies that are infiltrating our entire existence. I'm so ready to go home to my eternal HOME with Jesus on the other side of this short life I've been given here. But for now, I will stay and fight for the eternal well-being and safety of others that do not know the saving love of our Glorious Savior and God. 

As I'm watching all the "hoopla," internet chatter, and debate over the stunningly breathtaking revivals happening in places like Asbury University in Kentucky and in places like Uganda, I've been super hesitant to weigh in with my thoughts and opinions because 1) no one really cares what I think about it all if the truth be told...lol! but also 2) I've been so burned and deceived by one too many supernatural phenomena and events to get "sucked in" (again). And yet Jesus has also met me and extravagantly revealed His goodness and love to me through events such as these as I've sought Him with my whole heart through my attendance. Even those that were meant to deceive - and therefore lead me astray. That said, He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. And He promises that He will be found by us. 

At a time when the world around us is growing increasingly more polarized in terms of good vs evil, light vs dark, and good vs bad, let us (Christ's Bride - the true Church) walk in the goodness and purity that we're admonished to throughout Scripture but also let God work out His perfect and pleasing will in and through each person that says "Yes!" to Him. He alone knows the intents and purposes of our hearts. Therefore He alone can judge each person's heart. Our job is to walk in solid obedience to His word, obeying what He commands us to do, as well as to be as "wise as serpents and as innocent as doves" as we discern the fruit, character, and alignment with Scripture of the crowds, converts, and religious leaders of our day that flock to these movements. And do they attempt to exploit and/or manipulate for personal gain and their own kingdom-building? If they do, we should call them out just as Jesus did. If they are truly desiring Jesus and the MORE that He has come to bring us, let's be the Body that will love and nurture them into wholeness and eternal well-being as fellow joint heirs with Jesus in God's Kingdom and Family.

As all these battles continue to rage and escalate over every issue imaginable, I do humbly encourage us ALL to be repentent and broken before the Cross and our Precious Savior who meets us there. Let's pray earnestly for ALL those falling on their faces crying out for this same MORE that we all were destined and created to walk in. To be sure, there will be false prophets, false teachers, and wolves in sheep's clothing waiting to pounce and devour any sincerely humbled heart crying out to Jesus. The only Name that can save. Romans 10:13. Let's cover them in our prayers and help usher them into the very, very soon Wedding Feast of the Lamb. The hour is insanely late prophetically and Biblically speaking. Our Lord tarries so that NONE will perish.

I do add a strong note of caution, however, as we seek to love and pray for all to get on the "ark of safety" (salvation through Jesus alone). As the anti-christ spirit that is at work in and through our world pushes heavily for a One World Religion, don't be deceived by ANY movement, "revival" and/or conversion that isn't solidly Biblically grounded....and therefore preaching confession, repentance, and obedience to God's laws. There are NOT many ways to God. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Full stop.

Because my heart and desire are set FULLY on the Shepherd (and not the fields that He will lead me into), I know He will guide me through to safe passage and pasture because He is the good, good Shepherd who loves and cares for His own. I know this unquestionably well.