Beware of Critics in Your Inner Circle

This morning I am going over my notes from my first week of school at CFNI. I am still in awe of all that the Lord ministered to my heart this week. It was as if I received a massive download from Heaven (thus the name of this blog) and now I must process all of this because it is just too good to lose!

I am specifically looking at the notes from Friday's speaker Mike Smalley on the 7 reasons people fail in their life. Here is a brief highlight:

1. Failure to meet daily with the Lord.
2. living in the center of your weakness, not strength
3. not memorizing scripture
4. Rebellion to authority
5. no written goals
6. believing the lie "if you love God it all automatically works out fine"
7. allowing critics in your inner circle

I specificaly wanted to focus in on the last...allowing critics
into your inner circle. Looking over my life and wondering why it took me so long to truly submit to the Lord in the area of ministry...10+ years of true wrestling...I noticed one constant theme running through those times of wrestling--The voice of the critic.

This is not to say I place blame there. I don't. I am an adult and fully accountable to the Lord for my resistence to Him, but to deny the influence of that continual stream of criticisms over the year would be foolish. It was not just anyone making those criticisms, it was my best and closest confidant that has been with me from my High School Days...my closest life long friend of over 17 years. Her voice carried weight with me.

In retrospect I can see that I feared losing her friendship more than I wanted to obey God. Sin and rebellion has it's natural consequences and in the end I lost that friendship anyway. Though my heart grieves the loss of that friendship I find an amazing and unusual peace that floods my heart when I realize that the bondage of those years of criticism concerning ministry have been broken.

I am reminded of the following parable: Luke 9:57-62

57 As they were going along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." 58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." 59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." 60 But he said to him, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God." 61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home." 62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

I put my hand to the plow in March of 1988. I got saved and hit the ground running. I immediately went off to Bible College knowing that God was calling me into youth ministry. While at college I met and married my husband. My friend from High School had always stayed in close contact with through all these years. As my church certified me for ministry (a requirement of my degree in religious studies was to be recognized by your pastor and church as having a call of God on your life) my friend's voice became a bit louder.

Being a brand new Christian I was not well versed in all of scripture. Part of my joy in being at Bible College was that I was going to "make up" for all those lost years of Sunday School I missed as a child! I was on a fast track to learning the Word!

The more I studied the Word, the more convinced I was of the call of God on my life. The more convinced I became, the louder the voice of criticism became. For the next five years it was pounded in me that the only "call" God places on a Christian woman is to be that of a wife and mother. Anything else would be unbiblical. She had all her passages lined up and though I read those same passages I came away with a different understanding than she did. So her voice became all the louder.

I understand now the danger of legalism. For all of my friend's sincere belief in what she was telling me, I never once saw her happy or joyful about her life. It was a regimented duty to endure for her...far from the abundant life Christ promised and I longed for.

My heart shattered in a million pieces when I realized the toxicity of our relationship. That was the day I was reading about Paul and Barnabus and their parting of ways after a sharp disagreement concerning John Mark. I knew I had to place some distance in this relationship. She had come to the same conclusion. So my prayer now is that we will both walk in peace in the path God has called us. And I look forward to the day, even if it is in Heaven, that we can have a testimony of restoration just as Paul and Barnabus did.

So for now, I just remain bowed before the Lord with a humble and repentant heart for allowing the critical voice to influence my walk of obedience.

Here am I Lord, send me. Mold me, shape me, use me. I am yours.

Dawn