An Ex-Church Girl
Isaiah 43:2 is one of my favorite verses: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you (Renata) and when you pass through the rivers there will not sweep over you (Renata). When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Considering the prophet’s wisdom here, this year I bypassed finding yet another plan for reading through the Bible in 365 days and decided to concentrate on the book of Isaiah. Honestly, the process has been slower than I anticipated, with deep dives and rabbit trails of all kinds taken. I cannot say exactly what I had in mind at first, but Isaiah has me poking and prodding various commentaries to help bridge the gap of my modern, Western point of reference and the realities of the ancient world the Bible captures. I have even been excitedly listening to old sermons from trustworthy preachers on themes and concepts in Isaiah.
It seems that each discovery triggers another question and pondering that inspires me to further embrace divine mystery. Additionally, though, this process has reminded me that one thing that remains clear and undisputed is God’s unrelenting, loving, sacrificial pursuit of the people of Israel. Despite shameless and arrogant defiance, God still loved them. Their behavior was a slap in His face, but He continued offering them a way of escape and renewal. With the Israelites often drowning in self-induced mayhem, time after time God made a way for them out of no way. It is in the book bearing his name that Isaiah is called by God to preach to the chosen people, although God knowing they would reject the prophet’s words, and therefore the words of God Himself. Even as the Bible’s most referenced prophet, Isaiah’s ministry sadly would not pass today’s trendy North American multiplication metrics or models for “making disciples.” And to make it personal, starting in Chapter 1, I see myself in how the people of Israel were haphazardly navigating their life of faith. Others may be unwilling to admit it, but I am soberminded enough most days to testify as an ex-church girl who actively submits to God’s enduring work of moving from being ratchet to redeemed.
Back in July, Beyoncé released Renaissance, her first studio album since 2016 that quickly began receiving praise amid some criticism. Her “Church Girl” song drew a lot of attention. While I cannot speak to her faith or lack thereof, I can say that the song’s lyrics echo what my early 20’s were about, running from God into the black hole of happy hour bliss and serial dating. I may have still attended church most weeks to satisfy my poor “spiritual fire insurance” theology, but my interactions with and perspectives about the opposite sex mirrored brokenness easily located in the “Church Girl” persona people of all ages and walks of life uplift as aspirational. I had not blatantly denied Jesus wholesale, but had surely deviated from his ways, compromising my most critical commitments. As Francis Chan wrote in Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, “Lukewarm Christians don’t really want to be saved from their sins; they want to be saved from the penalty of their sin.” For me, though I continued attending weekly Sunday morning worship, volunteered for children’s church, gave my tithes and offerings, and also registered for quarterly Bible study groups, God was no longer the center of my existence around which everything else orbited. Instead, in this season, He was just an accessory to feed my idols. I had grown comfortable hanging out at an altar of empty confessions wrapped in a cloak of religiosity, rituals, and routines, just as it is described in Isaiah 1:13. I exchanged the pursuit of holiness for irrelevant offerings and empty service. The original relationship I fostered with God as a preteen, genuinely dialoguing with Him and joyfully absorbing the Word of God, was corroded by misconceptions about His character mixed with my own selfish desires (1 John 2:16). Like Ahaz, a shaky faith took me down a path of diminishing my worth and making allies with pagans (2 Chronicles 28:24).
God is love and God is holy. The two traits are inescapable, as one always points to the other. He will not violate His Word to compromise with man. In her book Holier Than Thou: How God’s Holiness Helps Us Trust Him, Jackie Hill Perry wrote, “When God loves, it is a holy love. When God reveals Himself as judge, pouring out His cup on the deserving, He has not ceased to be loving, or holy either. In all that He is and all that He does, He is always Himself.” Once you have been crucified with Christ, you no longer live for your decaying flesh, but Christ himself dwells inside you, which makes all the difference (Galatians 2:20a). Upon rededicating my life to God, He graciously welcomed me home with open arms—of course, because that is what He always does for His children. Nonetheless, consistently addressing and then divorcing myself from “Hot Girl Summer” principles and selecting the truly abundant life found only in Christ, has been a long journey under sanctification’s safe umbrella.
Living a consecrated life is not about keeping my sin suppressed or hidden. That does not lead to godly fruit. It, however, is about all my “work in progress” being taken captive by the power of the Holy Spirit. It involves a resolute devotion to living in ways that please God. No longer satisfied with the phony freedom of reckless, stubborn independence, I am choosing to rest in God’s amazing grace and mercy. It is about no longer indulging in the places, activities, and associations that I know full and well offend God, but walking in the light of happy holiness. I hope you find yourself able to sing these lyrics along with me more than anything else: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3).