Jana explains how the Lord enjoys us and doing life with us. And how that changes us in profound ways.
Freedom
Reading the Road Signs Well
I love the whole process of going on a trip. It forces me to examine what I really do and do not need. It also exposes props that I use to make myself comfortable, or worse, presentable. However, when you try to get four people in a small car, your props sometimes have to go. I have to admit, though, deep down I like the freedom that comes without the extra baggage. I remember when Chuck and I went to Paris for 10 days and each of us only took one carry on bag. It was wonderful to roll through customs without lugging more “necessities.” Beach trips are even better. Swimsuit, sunscreen, sundresses, towels, books, lotion, toothbrush, done.
Which brings me to the question rolling around in my head. What is it we really need? We spend our lives on the supposed “necessities” and wear ourselves out lugging around the extra bags, but could we really, really streamline and focus?
Apply this metaphor to your thought life. How many pieces of luggage are you dragging around there? Did you really mean to pack fear, anxiety, inaction, doubt? Do you really “need” those?
Scripture says we have the “mind of Christ” so how does that impact our ability to think clearly, without all the baggage? And what does He think about anyway?
Just for fun let me share how He directed my thoughts on the way home from Florida. We have this long standing exercise of conversing via billboards. All the way down there, it didn’t even enter my mind to look. But on the way home I began to feel the familiar tug and opened my heart to whatever He said. I realized He was answering questions that I had asked while we walked on the beach.
I had asked for direction for my life, my family and my work. I also surrendered the need to have life go “my way.” In His loving way, He revealed how my “plans” to do His work were still about me. He said, “Jana, you just make it all about Me. I will take care of the rest.”
So my response to Him was honest but confused. “I love that idea, but how do you do that? Do I do nothing and wait on you?” And this is the ah-ha.
“Of course not,” was His reply. Because He is always working. He explained that really making my life revolve around Him, about being for Him, through Him, to Him, was to be my main objective. The other stuff, my supposed props and necessities, were just baggage that was wearing me out. All that luggage was full of stuff trying to make me comfortable and be presentable. Those bags were full of stuff about me, for me, to me.
Here is what He had to say just to remind me that He is present, working, able and inspiring:
Let’s Make a Big Impression.
Making a Difference for Hurting People.
Spread Your Wings and Fly
Tested. Trusted. True.
Total Support is a Beautiful Thing.
Think Big.
An Alluring Business.
Winning Happens.
Be Blessed.
Going Strong.
Adventure above the Rest.
Lighten Up.
Pride. Tradition. Excellence.
Preparation with a Purpose.
Try today to travel light. You might find that you and Jesus really is enough. His thoughts really are higher than ours and He wants us to be where He is… I love traveling with Him.
Yes and Amen Retreat
“For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.“
2 Corinthians 1:20
Friday, April 13 through Sunday, April 15, 2012
We are going to use this “get away from the world time” to talk about:
What are God’s dreams for us?
What does He see for our lives, and our futures?
What has He already said, “Yes and Amen” to that we just don’t know about yet?
How do women get Un-stuck?
False expectations and demands around food, sex, beauty, and love (and the Lord only knows what else…) What lifts women up?
Rest and release in the love of God.
Freedom to use our voice and heart.
Letting go of the need to control.
Join us for this unique retreat held at Smoky Mountain Christian Village. A beautiful complex out of the traffic zone of Pigeon Forge, TN
Weekend Package Includes: Cost is only $80!
- Five sessions of Teaching and Materials with Jana Spicka
- 2 Night’s Lodging in a large and spacious chalet. Heated pool and nature trails on site.
- Four Meals and Snacks. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on Saturday and breakfast on Sunday morning. (Friday night dinner is on your own before first session.)
This is an intimate gathering limited to 18 women. So don’t wait to register.
Click here to hear a testimony from one of last years attendees.
Women Getting Real Weekly Class
This is a great place to go deeper into relationship with Jesus and other women. Both seem scary we know. But this is a place where we talk about real life topics and look for God to show up in the middle of our lives. 
The class is for all ages and does not require perfect attendance. Or homework.
Join us in person at Fellowship Church on Middlebrook Pike, Knoxville,TN every Tuesday night from 7:00pm – 9:00pm (childcare is provided for those who register).
For specific details around the class please feel free to email us at info@womengettingreal.com.
We meet three weeks on and one week off. Dates of class are listed below. We are planning to Livestream at least once month. So stay tuned for those details. Be sure to sign up for RSS or Facebook alerts so you don’t miss out on “Monday Snack Time with Jana”, its a weekly vlog.
Class Dates for Spring Semester 2011: April 5, 19, 26; May 3, 17, 24, 31
(new class location coming soon, stay tuned for details)
To hear audio from classes up until now check out our archived classes
Our Heart for Unhindered
This is the Lord’s mission statement. It’s what He’s always doing. And this is our desire for the women who are part of Unhindered 2.0. Don’t miss an amazing day with the Lord as we press into His freedom, His favor, His comfort, and His beauty for us. You can still register here.
Isaiah 61:1-3
1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
2 to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn,
3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.
The Long View of God
Have you ever been somewhere where you can see a long way? Picture in your mind the view from a mountain top. You can see a lot of landscape. Rivers, roads, tree lines, meadows. There are a lot of details and specific markers that help you identify where you are and where you have been.
If you are like me, when you look from the mountain view of your life, you can rattle off many markers that may have shaped your life. School, abuse, addiction, car wreck, divorce, bankruptcy, abortion, buying a house, getting new jobs, losing jobs, getting married, having children, death of loved ones, moving to new cities. These markers act as points on a map tracing our journey. But. There is more.
Here is one of those Holy Buts. If you look at your life and you only see those woundings or events, only see the hurt and scars, you might need to look again.
Many of us have long memories of past hurts and use them as stumbling blocks and excuses to stop us from moving forward. With great precision, we can articulate how this person did this and now we…. Or we say, “I chose this and now I can’t….”
When we do this, we need to look again because we fail to see God’s presence in the exact same life. Do we have a long memory of God’s faithfulness and help? With the same precision, can we articulate, this happened…but God…? He is, in a word picture, the mountain that we move over and around and through. He is our rock.
God was there. God is there. God will be there.
Was working, is working, will be working for our good.
In the book, The Shack, they pose a question to Mack about why he looks to the future and makes up things that will happen, but he never sees God in the future with him. Our regret about the past, our fear of the day, our anxiety about the future might be radically altered if we zoom out and see God is here.
It is, after all, His world. And we are His people.
Take a moment to pray this prayer out loud over yourself and your loved ones. Take a long view at God. Learn how to recount His presence in your life. It may help you see better.
O LORD, You have searched me
and You know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
You perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
You are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
You know it completely, O LORD.
You hem me in—behind and before;
You have laid Your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Where can I flee from Your presence?
Psalm 139 1-7
Safe or Brave?
In Just Courage, Gary Haugen asked, “Do you want to be safe or brave?” And then ever so subtly, he asked, “What do you think God wants for you? Safety or bravery?”
These are disturbing questions if you examine them. Let me combine some of Haugen’s thoughts with some ideas of my own that have surfaced. Safety is about control. Safety is about doing life “just so” so that we can predict and determine the outcomes of our lives, our jobs, our families. The desire for safety for the Christian is like the boiling pot for the proverbial frog. It will be the spiritual death of us because it calculates and manipulates all the Life out of us.
We resign ourselves to these small endeavors that are easily managed by our own efforts and rarely tap into the need for an Almighty God. We call this spiritual success because we have planned and prepared, avoided and outmaneuvered any real threat to our well being. We are, deep sigh, safe. We pacify our hunger for more by applauding ourselves with being “responsible.”
Yet all through scripture the only place of safety is in God Himself. Do you think Jesus was calling the disciples to safety or bravery? He said simply, “Follow Me.” Was that responsible? Did they hit the safety wall while following Jesus? You bet. But they also got to experience life beyond the grocery store and ATM. The feeding of the 5,000. The taxes in a fish’s mouth. You don’t need faith and miracles if you have everything under control.
So then is bravery a reckless abandon, without care or thought of future? Not at all. Bravery is following God where God is working and knowing that apart from God, you cannot possibly make it happen. Bravery is laying aside the comforts of life for the compassion of God. Bravery is dependence on God born of a desperate heart. It is the deep understanding that the attempted work is so much beyond the individual, that only God could pull it off. Yet the insanity is, being in His presence doing what only He could accomplish is beyond any man-made satisfaction. Talk about exhilarating.
You know the disciples were scared, but you also know they were blown away by what they saw and experienced of God. Sure it was hard, but our desire for “easy” is an American curse.
To make matters worse, Haugen asked, “How are you raising your children? To be safe or brave?” Safe in the cocoon of don’t-get-too-close-to-the-dirty-world because it might rub off? Or brave so that they are equipped and desirous of charging the gates of hell in the name of Jesus?
Assess your life. Ask hard questions and let God answer them. Do you want your lattes? Or do you want to see His Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven?
“I run in the path of Your commands for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32
We got trouble: right here in River City
Does anyone even remember this line from the musical, The Music Man? All my life I have heard this when bigger-than-life problems hit closer to home than we imagined. That’s what happened when I read last Saturday’s newspaper headline about sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking? You mean women who choose prostitution as a job? No. Sex slavery. These are predators who steal or buy children then force them to have sex with grown men up to 12-20 times a day. I’m talking 5-12 year old children. These are predators who ship women across country borders with the promise of a better job. But in reality they steal these women’s passports, take them to places where they don’t know the language, and then beat or rape them into submission. They are sex slaves. Forced to do whatever their oppressors demand.
Now put all this horror right here in little ole Knoxville. Or Atlanta. Or Los Angeles. Or Thailand. When it is your daughter, or son, does it matter what city you live in?
I have been reading like a fiend and meeting people who are making a huge difference in this battle. Let me recommend you read: Just Courage, by Gary Haugen. He asks haunting questions when calling us out of the shadows of Christian apathy and comfort.
Do you want to be safe or brave?
We love, and are made in the image of, the God of justice. We rarely talk about Him like this, but He talks about it all the time.
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8
1 million.
That’s how many children are trafficked for sex each year. That doesn’t include the helpless, defenseless women.
I want to just start the conversation. I want to ring the alarm. I want to ask you to ask God to show you what justice means in His opinion. Ask, watch and listen for His answers. Then ask Him what He has put in you to help bring justice to the world. If you are alive and you are free, then you have a mission.
Evil triumphs when good men and women do nothing.
Start Your Bulldozer
Are you looking for three easy steps to freedom? Sorry. I can’t do that. But I can share with you a few tools, a few chisels, God has used in setting me free.
• Worship
If freedom comes where His Spirit is, then ask for His Spirit to come. One way to ask His Spirit to come is through worship—whether that time is spent in silence, driving down the road, or singing. One of my favorite ways to worship is to read scripture and then say it back or sing it back to the Lord. Worship is an attitude of the heart.
• The Word
The Bible is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword. (Hebrews 4:12.) When I feel weak, sad, mad, just yuk, I know that I am starving to death for His truth. I feed on the Word of God. I have learned to expect God to listen to me and to answer me. He has far more to say than we have ever dared to believe. He uses the Scripture in mighty ways. But we must come expecting. Hebrews 10:19-23 challenges us to approach God with confidence and with full assurance because He is faithful to hear us. You cannot live a God life without God’s word.
• Journaling
As we write our story we see His story unfolding. As we write out our words, He reveals His Word in the middle of it. Journaling is a history of all God is doing in our lives. You should see the progress that has been made in my list of “hopeless situations.” In every one of them you can see God’s hand moving. I am so thankful that I wrote them out and then rewrote them with a blessing. In every situation, God is ever working. For His glory and my good.
Don’t be lazy. And don’t quit. Ask the Lord to show you how to worship Him in a deeper way. Ask the Lord to make you hungry for the Word. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you in a way that you can understand. You should see how many journal entries I have where God has spoken to me through nature. He took something simple that I love and used it to explan things about Himself, or me, or my circumstances. He is very creative.
Holy Roar
I have the privilege and honor of watching God rescue people. He rescues them from self hatred, God hatred, addictions, legalism, coping, numbness, unforgiveness, and shame. But He doesn’t just rescue them and set them on the shelf. He wakes them up, washes them off, and then gives them a voice. He restores their glory.
It is a truly beautiful transformation to watch. And sometimes it’s humorous even. Think about how awkward a butterfly looks as she is trying to get out of a cocoon. She comes out, butt first, wrangling and wrestling, trying get out of the shadowland she had lived in. But her steadfast goal is to emerge so she can dry her wings in the sun and then FLY! Well, in the same way, some of the women I see are in the “awkward process.”
These are strong warrior women. The Spirit of God is strong on them and in them. They may be unconscious of their full potential yet. (Aren’t we all?) But they are beginning to step out and step up. They are wrestling to test their new found strength and courage as they feast on the goodness of God. But I laughed the other day and told Chuck that some of these dear ones are like fierce lions who charge up to you but when they open their mouths what comes out is a ferocious… “meeeeoooow.” They are still finding their voice. Their God voice. Their ground shaking, tomb breaking God voice that makes the darkness tremble.
In due season. In due season these women’s voices will rise up and become a Holy Roar. Why does it matter? Because we have the power of Christ beating within these bags of bones. We have His voice and zeal to rescue the perishing, to bring the truths of God to a dying world, to rescue other bound and gagged souls. We must open our mouths and let His words wash over this world.
Here is what I got in my email this morning. One woman’s story out of millions of being sold into the sex trade. Any one else want to lean back their heads and let out a Holy Roar?
Claudia (Click the icon to flip the story pages.)