I’m so excited to have my dear girlfriend, Lisa Whittle, as a guest today. She has written a book entitled, I Want God. And let me tell you. It has impacted my life and relationship with God. It’s a must read and I don’t say that often. It will start a fire in your soul!

Guess what? I’m giving away a copy! Write, I Want God, in the comment section and enter to win!

Now, here’s Lisa…

Let’s be honest. We, the good church people, have this thing down.

We worship on Sundays. We speak Christianese. We take cupcakes to the neighbors and jump into the latest Bible Study group over coffee.

If our spiritual practices told the whole story, we’d be a Christian best seller.

But they don’t.

And God knows.

He knows when our heart is fully into Him. He knows when we mean those songs we sing about taking us into His great unknown and give me more faith and other beautiful words that are both awesome and scary.

The truth is, most of us do want God. We just want other things, too.

“When we say words like anything for You, God, but we mean anything but this, God, His heart is grieved. He denies this conditional allegiance of holding on to both when He designed us to be capable of going all in.” ~Lisa Whittle, I Want God

Your life says you want something more than God:

…when He tells you He wants to use you, but you choose to stay comfortable, instead.

…when you are only willing to do things that make sense to you or are in your control.

…when you chase the approval of other people, constantly investing time and energy into fighting for them to love you.

…when you are most interested in what God can do for you, rather than simply cultivating a relationship with Him.

But here’s the good news. If you want God, you can have Him. You just have to want Him more than anything else.

And then, your life will speak for itself. 

*Excerpt from I Want God, Chapter 6: Most

Before I start writing this book, I start shopping.

It’s summer, that glorious time when my kids’ legs are tanned from outside play, grill smells live in my nostrils, and I dive deep into Mommy waters while the writer sleeps by the pool. I like to shop, and

when the writer is asleep I seem to shop more.

But really, it’s about something else: Sometimes I don’t want to hear from God, and shopping helps with that.

I think, and I know, that this moment is not about the shopping (because it rarely is). I recognize it as the human impulse of storing up, controlling my world before He starts requiring something of me.

When you know God in that intimate way, there is an understanding that when He calls, it will be loud. And it will be specific. And it may require other things to go away. And it’s terrifying. So I shop.

But even as I sit in the parking lot of this antique mall with all my precious finds perched around me, I know it is a myth, the storing up. For a brief moment, the shopper subsides and the writer awakens. I take out my phone and go to my notes and the fingers start running and running fast.

It’s all a myth. Chasing this kind of more only brings the foggy high and runs up the bills, and in the end it is the same choice as it was yesterday: out of life, what do I want the most? (That is the question. That is always the question.)

But in the meantime, the shopping has gotten almost weird and manic—like I am ravenous for change. I feel the change coming, the unraveling that happens when I start writing a new book and mostly, I want Him to change me but the house is screaming so loud for me to pay it attention instead that I am nearly going deaf. In its every square foot I see imperfection and I want to make it beautiful, and it already is.

I shop because it helps me forget I may never do the everything for God both of us want. And the reality of that feels painful.

But no matter how much I shop, I will never be able to muffle Him.

Because He haunts me. Yes, haunts. Not in the creepy, scary movie way where it’s about some broken-down clapboard house with squeaky floors and curtains of cobwebs and that guy who died who now lives under the house and occasionally emerges wearing a mask. He haunts me in the unrequited love kind of way whereby you love someone so much it aches and their scent doesn’t go away no matter how much you try to scrub it off yourself.

So in the end, after the shopping, I will come back to the same. I’ll just have less money.

What I’m really wanting is not to tear my house apart and put it back together more beautifully, but what I want God to do to me: deconstruct me, clean me up, make me better, streamlined, more beautiful. And at the same time I’m scared He will.

This is the rub of my life.

The words are now done and the writer goes back to sleep. I have dialogued with no one in particular, but I have somehow worked it all out.

1. God is what I want most.
2. Other things will scream for my attention.

3. I will have to choose between them.

It is the same for you.

To order the book: click here!

To read more about I Want God: www.IWantGod.me

Connect with Lisa!

Link to Blog: www.lisawhittle.com

Link to Instagram: http://instagram.com/lisawhittle

Link to Twitter: https://twitter.com/LisaRWhittle

Link to Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lisa-Whittle/189067321123012?fref=ts

Link to Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/lisarwhittle/

 

And the winner of #TheBestYes is…… Mary T!! Congratulations, Mary! Please contact me with your mailing address.

Winning The Battle

I’ll never forget him—a thin, gray haired old man with shaky hands hunched over his grocery cart. Traffic was held up on either side as the old man tried turning his cart around in the middle of the isle. The poor man would shuffle his feet forward, turn the cart an inch maybe two, and then shuffle his feet backwards. Then, repeat the process. Some folks were beginning to complain as they backed down the isle. I wanted to turn around too but compassion for him filled my heart. It was divine compassion that comes from our new nature—the nature we receive when we come to Christ.

In that moment, there was no doubt what the Holy Spirit was prompting me to do. I was to help the fellow out. I stepped forward and inquired,

“Sir, may I turn your cart around for you?”

He agreed with a nod of his head. I could tell he was confused. After I got him turned around and pointed in the opposite direction, I expected a “thank-you” and the two of us would part company. Instead, he stood there and looked at me with his baby blues like a puppy does when it wants to go home with you.

At that moment, my dueling natures began to battle.

You don’t have time to help him further. My old, selfish nature persuaded. You have things to do. Just when I was about to agree with my old nature, the Holy Spirit whispered back, “Do unto others… Remember, you’ll be old one day.”

This was a situation where I could put off  my old nature that is hostile toward God (and died with Christ) or I could allow my new nature—Christ in me—to respond. If I let my old nature rule, the Spirit of God is unable to exert His power. On the other hand, when a woman yields to the Holy Spirit, He empowers her to put aside her own needs for the needs of another. Obeying the prompting of the Spirit allows your new nature to win over the old. The bible calls this “putting off the old and putting on the new.”

It was a tough battle, but I chose to submit to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and spent that afternoon helping an old man fill his grocery list. As we shopped, he told me about his life. Recently he had lost his wife. “She use to do all of our shopping.” He explained. Now I knew why he was so helpless. This was a new experience for him.

“I know Peg’s gone but I can’t stop talking to her like she’s still here.” He shared as we made our way to the checkout. This morning I said to her, “Peg, it’s grocery day. I’m gonna need some help.” Then, he patted my hand and added, “She didn’t let me down.”

(Okay, someone pass the tissues.)

There’s something wonderfully satisfying when you walk in the power of your new nature that your old nature can never quite fulfill.

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires” (Eph 4:22).

“And to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Eph 4:24).