Nikki and Colleen talk about New Year’s resolutions and their “perfection” in Adventism. Podcast was published January 1, 2020. Transcription by Gwen Billington.
Nikki: Hello, and Happy New Year! Welcome to Former Adventist podcast. I’m Nikki Stevenson.
Colleen: And I’m Colleen Tinker
Nikki: Just a few quick announcements. If you have any questions or comments for us, please email us at formeradventist@gmail.com. Also, there’s still time to sign up for our conference. At proclamationmagazine.com you can find a link for that. And also, we just want to thank those of you who have helped us finish up our end of the year with your donations last month, and we would love for you to consider joining us in ministry work this year. You can donate there also at the proclamationmagazine.com address. So, Happy New Year, Colleen. Can you believe it’s 2020?
Colleen: No, I cannot. Happy New Year, Nikki, and this is the day when we normally start taking down all the decorations after we finish watching the rerun of the Rose Parade.
Nikki: Oh, yes. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] What do you do on New Year’s Day?
Nikki: We don’t really have anything special on New Year’s Day. I think we’re all recovering from New Year’s Eve usually.
Colleen: Totally. Because we spend that and pray in the New Year, generally.
Nikki: Yeah. We have a wonderful New Year’s Eve here. We have communion at midnight usually and –
Colleen: It’s been a wonderful thing over the years.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: You know, there’s something about getting down all those Christmas decorations, which took so long to put up, and they are so fun. But then when they come down, the house looks clean, and in Southern California on New Year’s Day, there are far fewer leaves on the trees outside our windows than when the decorations went up, so it all feels bright and fresh, and the kitchen is filled with light, and it’s a new beginning.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: This brings us to that dreaded topic; right?
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: New Year’s resolutions. What do you think about them?
Nikki: I don’t actually think about New Year’s resolutions much, now that I am a Christian, and please don’t hear me say that Christians can’t have New Year’s resolutions or there’s something inherently unchristian about it, but –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – I used to have a lot of New Year’s resolutions before. I think I had my identity tied up so tightly in what I did that drove me to set a lot of goals, but now as a believer I find myself more excited and anticipating what it is that God’s going to bring me to and my family to in the year to come.
Colleen: It’s a whole new shift, isn’t it?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: I realized even as a kid I would try to make New Year’s resolutions because it was “the thing,” I wasn’t taught I had to.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But I realized very young that within the month they were ridiculous, unable to be kept.
Nikki: [Laughter.] Um-hmm.
Colleen: But it always was frustrating to me because it stressed that I just simply was not able to be good, and I did grow up believing I had to be good, and I remember that from the very youngest memory, like preschool, my prayer was to “Dear Jesus, please make me good,” and it was so upsetting to me that He would not make me good. So it kind of all melds into my response to resolutions. I simply don’t seem to be able to keep those things.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: But like you, after becoming a Christian, it all looks different to me.
Nikki: You know, it’s interesting. Actually, all of the holidays have shifted in my thinking –
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: – as a Christian, even the 4th of July. Everything changed for me, yeah, when I got a biblical worldview.
Colleen: That is interesting. That’s true. It’s actually a good way to describe the shift in my head.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It’s the biblical worldview that has made everything look different. Do you want to talk a little bit about how that has shifted in your head for New Year’s?
Nikki: Sure. You know, I didn’t think about New Year’s resolutions as a kid.
Colleen: Uh-huh.
Nikki: That wasn’t something I thought about. But as an adult in my 20s – I was Adventist all the way through my 20s, I was baptized at 19. I mean, I was raised in Adventism, but I really started taking it seriously once I turned 19, and then clear until I met you guys when I was 30 –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – all the way through then, I was always trying to aspire to this – the best word I can come up with is “prototype.”
Colleen: That’s a good word.
Nikki: There was a prototype for the put-together Adventist woman, mother.
Colleen: Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, my goodness, yes.
Nikki: We all know that Ellen White and her teachings and then the Adventist culture just touches every part of life, and so I would measure myself against that, and then I would look at the women around me who I felt were meeting that, at least by all appearances –
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: – and I would want to do better. I would want to get my house cleaner, I would want to be more consistent with my Friday chores, Sabbath school quarterlies, health –
Colleen: Yes. Oh, my.
Nikki: – how I ate, how much I exercised. I just was always wanting to be what it was I knew I was supposed to be, none of which was actually rooted in what the Bible said God expected from me.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: But there was this cultural picture.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And so I would get to New Year’s, and I would begin to resolve to do all of that better, and my identity was tied into that. So when I would fail, because I did fail –
Colleen: Um-hmm. Yes.
Nikki: – usually by February [laughter] –
Colleen: Oh, yes. [Laughter.]
Nikki: – it was truly a failure in my core.
Colleen: I get that. That’s what it did to me.
Nikki: It wasn’t just, like, “Oh, well, I can’t do that, I’m not going to do that.” It hit my identity somehow.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: And that was hard.
Colleen: And I had the same response to it. I know that a lot of times, at least as I grew older, at the new year I would start thinking in terms of, you know, the eating thing would enter in.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And let me just say, by the by, that the Adventist health message actually breeds disordered eating, if not outright eating disorders.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: There are so many restrictions, so many requirements, so many ideas of what causes disease and what doesn’t, and none of it reflects what God gave us in Scripture.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: Weight, looks, appearance, fitness, health – it was mandatory that a really successful Adventist woman, at least in the circles I ran in, somehow needed to look like all that was happening.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: You know, had to have a certain kind of weight, certain kind of look, certain kind of fitness, and certain kind of diet, and my kids had to.
Nikki: And in some ways, that kind of crossed every different manifestation of Adventism.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: If you had – I think of some of the families I knew in New England who were very conservative, strict dresses, no makeup –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – like really looked down their nose on Southern California Adventists. Even they had food and figure expectations.
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: And then coming out here, especially in the heart of their medical ministry at Loma Linda, you know, a lot of the Adventists I knew had medical professional degrees –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and came from families of wealth, and even, I noticed, depending on what school you went to, there were different expectations for the cars the kids drove –
Colleen: Oh, that’s interesting.
Nikki: Whatever end of the spectrum you’re on –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – there’s an expectation for how you look, how you eat –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and if you’re overweight, don’t worry, we have a CHIP program for you.
Colleen: [Laughter.] Oh, yes. Oh, my. That is so true. Even to the street your house is built on.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That all entered into that whole thing. It’s almost triggering to start thinking back to some of those things.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Needless to say, it didn’t always work for me. What were you going to say?
Nikki: Well, I was just going to say, so that is why. And again, I know that there are Christians who resolve to do wonderful things, but that’s why when I think back on resolutions, I think about how I lived my life as an Adventist, always striving to meet a mark that my identity was tied to.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s so connected in my head.
Colleen: Yes. And you know, I was thinking about this phenomenon this morning, even before we talked about it together. I was thinking back – I was pushing back into why this was such a big deal, and I realized that it was all connected to my Adventist understanding of what it means to be good and to be righteous and to be worthy, to be a God-fearer, as they taught me in Adventism. It was about behavior. Righteousness was defined as “right doing.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because of the Adventist worldview that says we’re body + breath, that we do not have an immaterial spirit that survives the body when we die, everything about righteousness was physical.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Sin was something we inherited in our gene pool, we had propensities to sin. Sin was not managing to make the right choices. Sin was refusing to pray enough and then being able to be deceived and fall into temptation. And when I understood as a Christian that we have spirits and that our righteousness is not about our behavior, but about whether we’re alive or dead through belief in Jesus, it changed everything. And the resolutions began to look different. No, as an Adventist with a worldview that I had to beat my body into submission with nothing but physical obedience to rely on, I couldn’t succeed at anything, and like you said, it shattered my identity over and over and over. I was just not good.
Nikki: Somehow this all really just comes down to sanctification.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And in Adventism, you measure that by what you see on the outside, really, primarily.
Colleen: Correct.
Nikki: I don’t know if they would necessarily teach that, but that’s how it looked in the lives of the people I knew and in my own life.
Colleen: Oh, yes.
Nikki: I have had to learn, as a mother in a small home, that God cares more about an orderly heart that is set on Him than on an orderly home.
Colleen: Yes. That’s so true, Nikki. That’s a really good point. And Adventism taught that sanctification was necessary for salvation. It taught us that we had to accept Jesus, whatever that meant, and then start being good, start obeying. In reality, the Bible teaches something very different. Justification is when we trust Jesus and His finished work. He declares us righteous from that moment, and our sanctification is the fruit of being saved, not the means of attaining salvation or of keeping it.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God keeps us in salvation. And understanding the spirit changes all of that, because if our spirits have come alive in Jesus, we can’t stop that. He is alive in us, holding us, and He’s the one that helps us learn to trust Him and to behave the way He wants us to, but it’s not a means of salvation. That is upside down from how I was taught.
Nikki: Um-hmm. I had to learn how to use Scripture as my measuring stick, if that makes sense.
Colleen: Oh, yes, it does.
Nikki: I couldn’t look around my house and decide how well I was doing as a mother based on what I saw.
Colleen: That’s a good point.
Nikki: It became clear to me that my responses to my children, the way that I was interacting with them, the way that I was discipling them –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – that was far more important than what the house looked like while I was trying to do it.
Colleen: That is a great point.
Nikki: I think I was pretty consumed with my house looking appropriate.
Colleen: Um-hmm. But we were taught that.
Nikki: And it’s really hard to manage that when you have little ones running around with toys, dropping them everywhere.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: I mean, they just dropped food, toys, whatever, everywhere.
Colleen: Absolutely. I know. Anyplace they went, there was stuff.
Nikki: And you could become very obsessive/compulsive and preoccupied and just feel like a failure –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – if that’s all you looked at.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: So I found that I was coming up short for my children when I was more upset about what I wasn’t able to get done –
Colleen: That’s such a good point.
Nikki: – than I was willing to take the time to be present with them and talk to them, and as I began to learn how to do that, we had some really incredible teaching moments and conversations together that have stayed with my children.
Colleen: That is such a cool thing. And they’re now how old?
Nikki: My son is 13, and my daughter is 10.
Colleen: And that’s quite something when you can say about a junior high son and a preteen daughter that things have stayed with them.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: That’s a gift from God.
Nikki: That’s God.
Colleen: Um-hmm. I remember when I started – right after we left Adventism, and I started teaching full-time at a Christian school in Redlands, and I felt completely overwhelmed because I had 120 English students and all those papers to grade. We were also doing the FAF Bible studies, and I was prepping for them every week, and I realized, in the Adventist community in Southern California, that a lot of women had household help, and it was a shock to me when I realized that, because I did not grow up that way. But when I started understanding how much was required of me with my work, I started wishing I had somebody to come in once a week and help clean, but it never happened. You know, we lived on a budget, and it just wasn’t in the stars, so to speak, but I would ask the Lord, “If it’s your will, please help me to be able to get someone to clean the house.” Well, it never happened, and I finally realized, I have to ask the Lord something different. So I started praying that He would help me accomplish what He knew I needed to get done and give me the ability to let everything else go. That has been an amazing thing where God has worked in my life. It’s still a prayer I pray on a regular basis, and He has given me the ability to not feel that deep shame, inadequacy, and anxiety if every room in the house doesn’t look company-ready.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And He has been faithful to help me get done at every step of my life what needs to happen, as long as I have trusted Him for that. But I’ve had to trust Him to take care of my identity and not require that I be perfect the way I was taught perfection should look.
Nikki: It really is an identity shift.
Colleen: It is.
Nikki: And it’s trusting Him.
Colleen: That’s what it is for me. It’s trusting Him. As the years have gone on, I have discovered that this trust in Jesus is what grows as I’m in His Word. Now, I know how predictable that sounds. I always heard that in Adventism, “Oh, read the Bible, know the Word. Read your Bible every day, have your daily devotions.” I mean, I heard that all through my growing up, so understanding how to approach the Bible as a Christian, it was a new thing, even though the words might sound the same, but I didn’t even understand how different reading the Bible is as a Christian at first. The idea of being scheduled about reading the Bible was a little annoying to me.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Because it was like a resolution that I couldn’t keep. As I asked the Lord to help me do what He knew I needed to do, it became more and more easy to spend daily time in Scripture, and He has been so faithful to teach me more about what’s real. We were just talking, Nikki, about the impact of being in the Word. You were recently hearing some people talk about a Bible reading program.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Do you want to talk a little about that?
Nikki: I’ve been feeling like I want to find a plan to go through the Bible next year, and I’ve been kind of looking around, but not seriously researching it, and I was listening to another podcast, and someone was being interviewed who shared about a reading program that she is a part of.
Colleen: The Bible Challenge?
Nikki: Yes, it’s called the Bible Challenge. And what they do is they actually read through the entire Bible in 9 months.
Colleen: That’s fast. [Laughter.]
Nikki: I know. And that feels more exciting than trying to do it in a year. I don’t know why, it’s just the challenge. And then after the 9 months, they go through the epistles several more times. They revisit that. I really appreciated what she was saying about this. She likened it to being at a table, at a banquet, where you’re feasting together on Scripture.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And she said, “If you fall off schedule and you get behind and you’ve missed a few days and you want to come back, don’t panic; don’t worry about it. Come back and join us where we’re reading.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: She said, “If you missed breakfast and went to someone’s home for dinner, you wouldn’t say, ‘You know what? I can’t eat your dinner because I haven’t had breakfast, so I’m going to go work through some cereal, and then I’ll come and have your dinner.'”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: She said, “Just keep coming back, and just join us where we are at,” and it was real low pressure, which I appreciated, because you know, as an Adventist, I think I felt a lot of guilt about not checking off that box –
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: – and not doing those – for me, really, it was the Sabbath school quarterlies –
Colleen: I did too.
Nikki: – and even Bible reading. I really appreciated the way that she talked about it, but she emphasized the importance of being in Scripture in a way that didn’t feel like, “This is a box to check.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: She talked about how – I think she referred to 1 Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is God-breathed –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – and that it equips us for every good work, and that really, that is where the Christian lives their life is in the day-to-day work that God puts in front of them to do; and by being in the Word, we’re then equipped to do that in a way that glorifies Him in all things.
Colleen: Yes. That’s so interesting. There’s something about the decision to read through the Bible that always felt overwhelming to me until in 2008 our church went through the Bible in a year. We had a church-wide program to do that, and Richard and I did that. And when we were done, we decided we would keep doing it. Now, we are still doing it almost 12 years later, but we are no longer going through the whole thing in a year, and I’m not suggesting going slowly. I mean, I like the 9-month idea that you’re talking about. I think people have to find what works.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: But we do read on a regular basis together every day, and we use Bible reading plans. We’ve tried different things. We have tried chronological plans, we’ve tried historical plans. You can find these on Bible apps, and they’re online, and it’s interesting. Here’s the thing that has struck me over 12 years of doing this. There is a lot, especially in the Old Testament, that I would just glaze over. We finally realized that reading it out loud helps us stay awake, and we will alternate chapters when we do it together. Now, it doesn’t have to be done that way. There are chapters with so many big words and strange names that you think, “Okay, I’ll just skip down here to verse 20,” and then I remind myself that every word of Scripture is God-breathed, and Richard said something to me one day that was really interesting that helped me with those. He said, “You know, the thing about these lists of names which seem pointless to us is that it actually is history. Jews can know who their heritage has been, what tribes they have been from.” He said, “There’s a way they can look back and see this is actually historical because records were kept, the rolls were taken when they would, like, come back from Babylon and settle in the land. There’s so much history that there are actual names connected with and you know is true.”
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: It was a very interesting insight, but the thing that’s been the most surprising to me is that even though much of the last 12 years of reading through the Bible has been a bit in a daze, a little bit of glazed-overness, sometimes even getting really sleepy while Richard’s reading and not being sure what we read [laughter] –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – we will always come back to it again when we do it again – I’ve started to realize that there are connections and big pictures that have come together in my head that I would never have had if we hadn’t read through that. And it has changed how I see history. I can’t even tell you all the names, but it has made a difference in how I see things. It really does change us. The Bible is alive, and it will accomplish – God said this – it will accomplish what it was sent out to do.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: So if we read it, even if we don’t understand all the words or can’t pronounce all the names, it makes a difference because it is alive, and it is God’s Word, and He keeps His promise.
Nikki: And it reveals Him to us.
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: So when you’re reading through an Old Testament passage where you see God making promises to Israel, and you know He’s going to keep them, that absolutely filters down into your understanding of the faithfulness of God and how He’ll keep His promises to you, so even in the stories that maybe seem obscure or not relevant, as some people might say, it’s revealing God to us and His character and telling us about who He is, and we can translate that into “God is the same.”
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: He is still faithful and compassionate and merciful, and He will not acquit the guilty, let them go unpunished.
Colleen: That is so true!
Nikki: And we just learn so much about who He is, and I think for me that’s what’s so compelling about reading the Bible as a believer. Before, it was something I knew I needed to do. It was a box to check –
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: – and I usually only checked about six boxes out of 66. [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.] Yeah.
Nikki: But now the draw is that this is where I know my God.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: This is how we know Him.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And that’s where I think we really are changed.
Colleen: I agree.
Nikki: I think one of the other things that’s changed my picture of New Year’s resolutions is understanding the sovereignty of God and understanding that, while He gives us that freedom to desire, you know, things, maybe someone has a goal to, I don’t know, run a 5K or 10 or whatever. That’s fine. But not holding that stuff so tightly and making it our identity, because the fact is, we read in Proverbs 16:9 that a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I know so many of the interruptions I had in my life before – as an Adventist I would set a goal, I’d have a desire –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – I was going to be a great Adventist mother [laughter] and, you know, bring my son to Sunday school –
Colleen: Oh, you meant Sabbath school. [Laughter.]
Nikki: – Sabbath school. I love it when I make that mistake, can I just say?
Colleen: I do too.
Nikki: I would have all these pictures, but then I remember when he was 5 weeks old, on December 16, 2006, we found out that he had viral meningitis.
Colleen: Oh, my.
Nikki: And we spent his first Christmas at the hospital. At that age they’re still up all night, at least if you have a colicky baby like I did. And I would walk the halls, and I would think, “What did I do wrong? What am I being punished for?”
Colleen: Oh.
Nikki: “This isn’t what our Christmas was supposed to look like.” I had all of these goals and ideas, and for some reason God stopped me, and He was punishing me. Well, I can look back at that time now and know that actually, there were a lot of wonderful questions that surfaced in my mind that helped drive me toward truth because of that.
Colleen: Isn’t that interesting.
Nikki: And I can thank Him for that time.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So I had my plans, I had my goals, but the Lord really does determine our steps. And for His purposes. And so I think that what I’ve come to understand about looking over a new year, my desire is to learn even better how to trust Him for that next step –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – moment by moment, walking with Him, whatever He’s going to bring to me, know what it is He wants me to know through it.
Colleen: Yes. There’s a lot of freedom in that too. Even though it took me a long time, the Lord is so faithful to lead us step by step. He knows where He’s taking us, and I just have to trust Him one step at a time. I don’t have to jump to the next year.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: He doesn’t show me the big picture always; He just takes me one step at a time. But it took me a long time to start realizing it’s actually okay to let my guard down and know that the future is in His hands. I don’t have to have a complete five-year plan or ten-year plan. I can know that I am honoring the Lord by trusting Him, and He will show me the next five years. And I’m not saying I don’t make plans, but I don’t feel anxious about not achieving them, because things happen.
Nikki: Yeah. It really does, it changes the way that we respond to the things that come that we don’t expect.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: The diagnosis, the lost job, the foreclosure on the house, the broken relationships.
Colleen: Totally.
Nikki: All of the unexpecteds that show up in our lives become opportunities to trust and obey and submit to Him.
Colleen: Exactly. And if you don’t have the Lord, if you don’t know Him and know you can trust Him, where are your resolutions anyway when that diagnosis or that loss happens.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: They change how you even can approach your resolutions, so the resolutions are just superficial fluff. The real bottom line is: Am I going to trust the Lord and do what He shows me is my next right step?
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And it’s a hard lesson to learn, but He is faithful, and He doesn’t push us over the cliff in teaching us.
Nikki: No. And can I just say, I just want to speak to that phrase you used, “The next right step.” There was a time a few years ago where I really struggled with depression. To my surprise, a lot of people who’ve left Adventism struggle –
Colleen: Oh, I’m glad you said that.
Nikki: – with depression, a shocking amount with PTSD –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – a lot of dysfunction in families – and please don’t hear me saying “all families,” but a lot of them.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: A lot more than I ever expected.
Colleen: Me, too.
Nikki: I think it was last February I did a poll, and the statistics that I got out of that were shocking, the things that people have faced. And sometimes after you leave Adventism and you come to Christ and you come to the Word, and if you can get in a healthy church especially and see what families look like, you begin to realize things weren’t what you thought they were growing up.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: And sometimes it’s hard to process. So I went through a time where I was really struggling, and I had these two little ones, and then the house would just get even messier. My health was – I’d had some stuff come up too that just complicated things, and I had to decide how I was going to get through each day in a way that honored God.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: That 1 Corinthians 10, I think it’s 31, “Whatever you do, do it to the glory of God.” Sometimes that doing the next right thing was just doing the dishes.
Colleen: I know.
Nikki: Sometimes it was just doing the mountain of laundry –
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: – feeding the kids, reading them a book, and sometimes that felt pretty hard.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: Certainly I couldn’t have thought of New Year’s resolutions at that time.
Colleen: No.
Nikki: There were heavy things going on. But it was through Scripture and through that “do the next right thing,” learning how to obey Him, and learning who He was through that that really began to show me God’s faithfulness.
Colleen: That’s so true. I remember years ago being overwhelmed with anxiety and depression, that I felt like I was up against something I couldn’t resolve, and I felt so helpless and so depressed that I did something I hadn’t done for a long time. I was a Christian, I was born again. It was years ago, but it was after leaving, and I felt so frantic and so helpless that I went to bed at 11 a.m. and just laid there and wanted to sleep. I knew I was indulging in a way, indulging my feeling of franticness. I knew I was just deciding that life was hopeless and I couldn’t fix it and this is my answer. And as I lay there, and I have to admit it was like an hour or two in –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – it’s embarrassing to admit I did that – the thought kept going through my head that I needed to ask God what was real.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I had another thing that was going through my head. Our pastor had preached through Mark 7, I think it was 7. He was preaching through the Book of Mark, and he was preaching about Jesus meeting the disciples in the storm on the lake after He told them to take the boat across the lake, and they hit that huge storm, and He came to them on the water, and then, you know. And he had said, “The thing to remember is that the storm was God’s will. He knew what was coming, and He sent them out on a perfectly clear lake and knew that storm was going to come and disrupt them before they got to shore, but they were in God’s will. In that storm, they were in God’s will, and He met them in the storm, and He calmed the storm, and then He got them to shore.
Nikki: You know, I don’t know if it was that – if it was in Mark, because I think there were a couple of situations like that; right? One of them He said, “I will see you on the other side.”
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: He let them know He would be with them on the other side.
Colleen: That’s absolutely true. That’s absolutely true. Yeah. As I was lying there, that was going through my head, and the thought came to me I needed to ask God what was real. Well, like you said, Nikki, and I’m so glad you brought it up, there is so much PTSD among so many of us who leave Adventism. There has been so much dysfunction in our social worlds and in our families often that we’re left with things we can’t even completely understand.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: I realized that my reaction was a reaction based on my feelings of what I thought was happening and wasn’t necessarily the whole picture, but I didn’t even want to admit that. So after about half an hour of thinking, “Pray to know what’s real,” I finally decided, “Fine, I will. I don’t want to, but I’ll just do it because I know I should. Please, Father, show me what’s real.” You know, I lay there kind of almost rebellious, but not exactly rebellious, because I knew I needed to ask the Lord to show me. And you know what happened – it was pretty funny when I look back on it – after about half an hour of that, I realized that what was real for me was I had to get out of bed and go to work.
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: I had a deadline, I had an editorial deadline, and I needed to go work on it. I didn’t have to even address the issue that drove me to bed, I just needed to get up and go to work.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And when I got up and went to my work, it was amazing how all of that franticness dissolved. The Lord is faithful. He doesn’t leave us in our muddle when we ask Him to show us what’s real.
Nikki: That makes me laugh. I remember I was feeling sorry for myself, and I decided, “Okay, I need to read the Bible.”
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And so I opened up to the passage in John. I don’t remember exactly what chapter, it’s fairly early, where Jesus goes to the Pool of Bethesda, and there’s a man there who’s been there for, like, 30 years I think it was.
Colleen: Um-hmm, 38 years.
Nikki: Thirty-eight?
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And Jesus comes to him, and He said, “Do you want to be well?” And the man didn’t say yes –
Colleen: [Laughter.] That’s true.
Nikki: The man told Him – this is probably an unkind way to say it, but a bit of a pity party.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: “Every time I go, someone steps in before me, and there’s no one here to help me,” and I’m reading it in the mood I’m in, thinking, “Oh, that poor guy.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: And Jesus, the response that He gave him shocked me. He told him to just take up his bed and walk.
Colleen: Isn’t that something.
Nikki: He didn’t say, “I’m sorry, you must be lonely.”
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: Or, “That must have been really hard to watch that for 38 years.” I mean, there wasn’t – which is what I wanted. I remember feeling upset with Him, like, “I’m praying for comfort. You’re the Comforter.” You know, “Why don’t I feel comfort?” And I was upset.
Colleen: Um-hmm.
Nikki: And I read that, and I thought, “Oh, okay. I just have to obey Him.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: “I just need to obey Him and get up and do what it is that I’m supposed to be doing. I have two small children out in the living room” –
Colleen: Exactly!
Nikki: – “and I need to go out there, and I need to see what they need. That’s my job right now.” And as I started to do that, I realized there was grace in the work.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And I wrote that on a whiteboard above my desk in my bedroom, “There’s grace in the work,” to remind me –
Colleen: Oh, wow. That’s so interesting.
Nikki: – when I didn’t want to work that God blesses us with – I don’t know, He just – He blesses us with peace and joy when we do the work that He’s given us to do.
Colleen: That’s true. And I want to say too that we’re talking about all of this from a perspective of being born again –
Nikki: Oh, yes.
Colleen: – of being alive in Christ.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: If we do not know Him, if we have not trusted Him and been born again, all of this is just works.
Nikki: It’s just putting the cart before the horse.
Colleen: Exactly.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Because none of it will actually work. We won’t find peace in the work if we’re not trusting God.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: If we’re trying to find Him by working, we won’t. We have to trust Him to know Him.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: That’s been a huge shift in my thinking.
Nikki: That’s an important distinction.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: One of the things that helped me with that after I was born again was realizing, “Oh, the Bible’s written – the New Testament is written to believers.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: So all of these commands, all of these things we’re talking about doing, it’s for those who have been born again –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – who have been brought to life and now are indwelled by the Holy Spirit and equipped and given the power to obey, because on our own it’s – in fact, in Romans 8 I think it says that our good works are just filthy to Him.
Colleen: Exactly. You know, it’s so interesting because I’ve been studying Galatians the last few months. There’s an amazing text – you know, I know I’ve seen these texts before, I’ve read them before, but they’ve just sort of been new to me lately. Galatians 5:25, and this is after he lists the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, and he has this one short sentence: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit,” and I looked at that, and I thought, “Okay, he really is not talking about behavior in the first half of that verse.” “If we live by the Spirit” is a reference to being born again and having eternal life.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And as an Adventist I read that, and it just all kind of seemed metaphorical, like, “Yes, if I acknowledge Jesus, if I acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit, then I have to walk like I acknowledge that.” But that’s not what it’s saying. He’s saying if we live by the Spirit, which means if you have trusted Jesus and been born again and transferred from death to life, then walk by the Spirit, and here’s the thing that I never understood as an Adventist, a spiritually alive person still has a mortal body. It took me a long time to realize that.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God brings us to life spiritually, but He doesn’t give us a glorified body until later. So Paul explains that dilemma, like in Romans 7 he talks about the fact that we have this body of death, a law of sin in our members, which is our flesh. That’s separate from our born-again spirit, and that’s why we feel like we’re always fighting between what we know we want to do, as people who know we love the Lord, and what our flesh just sort of drives us to, like the day I went to bed [laughter] –
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: – instead of working and trusting Him. So if I am alive – and this is what the Lord reminded me of that day as I lay in bed – if I live by Him, if I’m alive in Him, then I have to act on the basis of being alive in Him, not that my flesh is the last word.
Nikki: Well, and there again, it’s an identity thing.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: Before we’re born again, no matter what we have in our head about what we think we believe, we serve the god of self.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: We self-define –
Colleen: Yep.
Nikki: – and we serve the god of self, and if you are lucky enough to be born into a false religion [laughter] –
Colleen: [Laughter.] Hear, hear!
Nikki: – they will give you a construct of self that you’re supposed to live up to.
Colleen: Yes, they will.
Nikki: But whether you’re in false religion or just in a state of unbelief, you’re self-defining. And so if your self is feeling sorry for itself, then it has the right to go to bed and not do anything else.
Colleen: Yes! Exactly. And as someone alive by the Spirit, my identity is in Christ.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: God sees me as hidden in Christ. In other words, to see me He has to look at Jesus, and I am in Him. I have to trust Him and make my body do what my head and my heart and my spirit know is real.
Nikki: In fact, I often will tell myself, “Beat your body into submission.” [Laughter.]
Colleen: Right! And that’s different from the Adventist view of beating your body into submission, which is like self-abnegate, self-abnegate, I do not exist, only the – you know, no!
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: We are alive and identified. We have His identity to help us get out and do what we need to do.
Nikki: And our affections are changed.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: When we’re born again, our affections are changed.
Colleen: That’s such a good point.
Nikki: And so we really, truly do make it our aim to please Him, not by a resolution, but because we have the Spirit of God in us, crying out, “Abba, Father.” Who doesn’t want to please their father? And when your Father is the God of the universe?
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It’s a powerful desire to please Him.
Colleen: And again, not everybody is a true child of God.
Nikki: Right.
Colleen: Not everybody can claim God as their Father. It’s very clear in Galatians and in Romans that when we trust Jesus, God puts His Spirit, the Spirit of Adoption, into our hearts by which we cry, “Abba, Father.” And that’s something that only is given to those who trust Jesus and have repented and know they can’t live without Him.
Nikki: And when we’re born again and we’re placed in a new family, we’re a new creation, and we have a new identity, and that means we have a new lineage even.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: And so, you know, in a society that’s obsessed with, you know, DNA testing and Ancestry.com, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but as believers now, we learn about our family lineage through Scripture.
Colleen: That’s true.
Nikki: And so, it’s just such a gift and such an honor to even have access to that.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: To be able to go back – this is not just a to-do list; this is where we learn about our family. This is where we learn about our family and our Father, and it’s also where we’re sanctified.
Colleen: That’s right.
Nikki: This is where the Holy Spirit works in us and changes us. Some of the verses I’ve been thinking about lately – I’ve always loved John 8:31, “If you abide in my Word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” He gives us truth, He gives us reality.
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: And then, of course, His high priestly prayer in John 17:17, He prays to the Father, “Sanctify them in the truth. Your Word is truth.” I mean, that’s from the mouth of God.
Colleen: “Your Word is truth.”
Nikki: “Your Word is truth,” and we’re sanctified by His Word.
Colleen: Yeah.
Nikki: It also brings up the picture in Ephesians 5 when Paul’s writing to husbands and wives and he tells husbands to love your wife like Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word.
Colleen: That’s so profound to me, that the Word washes us.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And that’s why, even if you’re spending time in the Word and feeling distracted a little bit or feeling like you don’t understand all the passages, it’s still important to read because it changes us. It’s alive because it’s from God. As we all face this new year, maybe instead of thinking about resolutions and things we want to accomplish this year that we haven’t done – yeah, if you want to run a 5K, go ahead and do it, but maybe that isn’t our life goal. Maybe that isn’t our year’s goal. Maybe what we should do is challenge ourselves to share the Word of God and make that the primary thing that we pursue. I know it’s often the case that it seems like the day is so full, has so many deadlines, that where on earth will we find the time to sit with Scripture? But you know, in my own life, I have determined that it has made so much difference to me that I have to say, “Every morning I will take this amount of time and just spend it in the Word.” I don’t think there’s a formula for how to do that. Some of you may want to find a 9-month reading plan or a 12-month reading plan. Some may want to actually spend more time just delving into the depths of one book. One thing that I’ve found to be really profound that I would never have expected to even think about, much less enjoy, is memorizing or copying Scripture.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: Now, you’d think, “Why would I copy Scripture? It’s already written.” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But I remember learning somewhere back in my teacher training that there are three kinds of learning. There is aural, the ears; there is visual, what we see; and then there is kinetic. And when we copy Scripture, just into a notebook, we are using at least two of those, we’re using the visual and we’re using the kinetic. If we read it out loud, we’ll even get the aural. [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.]
Colleen: But the thing that’s so profound about that is that you have to go slowly enough to look at the words individually, and you look at verb tenses, and you look at word meanings, and you look at prepositions, and you think, “What is that actually saying?” like that verse I read a little bit earlier: “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” You can’t just gloss over that if you’re looking at the words individually. Living by the Spirit is not the same as walking by the Spirit. So what does it mean to “live in the Spirit?” Well, it means being alive spiritually. I think as we start this new year, that’s one thing I can say from my experience that is the most important thing, commit to knowing the Word of God and to asking Him to teach you what He wants you to learn as you go through it.
Nikki: Um-hmm.
Colleen: And I know that I do ask Him to show me. I personally spend time in books individually, and I memorize, and as I’m ready for another book, I will actually ask the Lord sometimes, “What should I work on next?” I remember one year – it was years ago, maybe over ten – Richard said to me, “I think you should memorize Romans.” I’m going, “Oh, right!” [Laughter.]
Nikki: [Laughter.] But you did it.
Colleen: But I did it.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: Yes, I did. I did three chapters at a time, I didn’t keep it all in my head at the same time, but the profound effect of knowing what those words, of having to remember what those words were, how the punctuation worked, what the verb tenses were, it’s profound, and it changes me.
Nikki: Um-hmm. You know, there are people who say that for the life of them they can’t memorize anything, but even if they’re there learning it, memorizing it in the small segments that they can –
Colleen: Absolutely.
Nikki: – or copying it or reading it through –
Colleen: Yes!
Nikki: – it makes the rest of Scripture more accessible when you’re in dialogue with people, and you’re like, “Now, wait a minute, Hebrews 1 says, because I just read that.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: It just – it makes truth more accessible. I’m telling you, I have the memory of an emu –
Colleen: [Laughter.]
Nikki: – but for some reason, the Word of God sticks in a way that nothing else does.
Colleen: It’s true, isn’t it?
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And I think it’s because the Holy Spirit puts it in our hearts.
Nikki: Yeah.
Colleen: And there is no one way for everybody to approach Scripture. It’s just that we have to do it.
Nikki: Well, yeah. Yeah, and according to the rules of a proper hermeneutic.
Colleen: Right.
Nikki: That’s another podcast.
Colleen: That is another podcast, but that is true. What the words say, the words mean. Just know that.
Nikki: You know, I think probably the text that sums this up, this idea of the New Year’s resolutions, in my head is the one that says, “As you received Christ, so also walk in Him.”
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: We receive Him when we – well, Ephesians 1:13 and 14 says, “When we heard the word of truth” –
Colleen: Yes.
Nikki: – “the gospel of our salvation and believed.” So He revealed Himself to us. We knew Him. We knew what was real. And so we receive Him that way, and we walk that way, we walk knowing – growing in our knowledge of Him and then trusting and obeying Him.
Colleen: Such a good point. As we start this new year, let’s share this commitment: To know God’s Word in a new way and to know Him because we know His Word. And if you haven’t trusted Jesus, know that that is the way to know God. It is not through self-perfection, through self-improvement, it is through knowing Him. And His Word cannot fail. He became a man without ever giving up any of His God identity. He died on the cross, took our sins to the cross in His body and died our death. He was buried, He rose again on the third day, breaking death so that we can have life, and when we trust Him, that resurrection life is ours from that moment, and that is the event, that new birth, is the event that marks our being sealed with the Holy Spirit, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 1. That’s our prayer for you this year, that you will know Jesus and His Word will fill your heart and make your life filled with meaning. So Happy New Year, Nikki!
Nikki: Happy New Year! †
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