Beyond the Masquerade

Dr. Juli Slattery: I’m glad that you’re here. I believe that you’re here not to hear from me, but because God has something very specific and unique for you. So let me just open us in prayer and ask that He would do exactly that—minister to each one of us in this time.

Heavenly Father, we come before You, and I thank You and praise You that 8,500 women are here this weekend to seek You. What an amazing thing and that You can know all 8,500 of us, know our hearts, know our pain, know our needs, and that You can take Your Word and personalize it to each one.

And, Lord, I ask that’s what You would do in our time right here. Lord, You’ve given me a message to deliver, but I truly believe and have faith that this message is unique for each woman here. I ask that Your Holy Spirit would be personal in showing her the bondage that she might be in and how to become free, how to become free in You.

And, Lord, reign over our time. We want to lift You high and glorify Your name. In Jesus’ name, amen.

This is my first True Woman Conference—as an attendee, as a speaker. I’m just glad to be here. (Applause) Yes. Let me just get this out of the way and tell you that if I don’t look anything like you thought I would look, if you listen to me on the radio . . . I hear that all the time—“bigger hair, longer hair—I thought you would be taller, better looking.” You know, whatever.

It’s just a joy to be here. I don’t usually get to see the people that I speak to, so it’s a little more intimidating to see your faces. But it’s great to see your faces. I get to share with you in the next hour a message that God’s been writing on my heart for literally twenty years. It’s a life message for me. It’s something that I’ve struggled with since I was really a teenager. It’s something that the Lord continues to teach me more about, and that’s getting free—getting free from the masks that I wear and getting free from this whole game of the masquerade.

I want to start by telling you a story of something that I heard when I was in graduate school. I had a supervisor in graduate school, and her name was Roz, and Roz was an atheist. She knew I was a Christian, and so as we would do our supervision sessions, we’d often talk about philosophy and religion. She’d ask me questions about what I believed in, and I’d ask her questions about what she believed in.

One time she sat me down, and she told me this story:

Juli, there was this guy whose job was to study bugs. [I thought, Okay, this sounds weird.] And when this guy studied bugs, he would go out in the desert, like with a caravan of people in the middle of nowhere so he could study very exotic bugs.

And so he’s out in the middle of nowhere studying bugs with a couple of his fellow bug studiers, and one day he looks up, and they’re all gone. Everybody’s left him! He’s left alone in the desert with his bugs, with no car, with no water, with no food, and, of course, he starts to panic. And as he looks on the horizon, all he can see is sand.

Eventually the sun starts to go down, and he sees a little flicker of light out on the horizon, and he knows that survival is to follow that light. So all night long, he walks toward the light.

Eventually he finds that there’s this little village in the middle of the desert, and there’s this village of people that live in these houses that are underneath the sand. They welcome him in, and they feed him, and they give him water, and they show him a place to stay in one of these little huts underneath the sand, and he sleeps really well that night.

Then he wakes up to find that he’s in captivity, and they’ve kept him in a cell underneath the sand, and his job is to mine this precious ore that’s underneath the sand every day. If he doesn’t mine enough ore, then they’re not going to feed him or give him water.

Not only does he have to mine the ore every day, but because he lives in the desert and his house is under the sand, guess what happens? The sand comes in. So every day he has to shovel sand. He’s just miserable, and he’s depressed, and he’s complaining about his life.

One day he wakes up to find that they’ve brought a woman who’s also in captivity, and she lives with him. Of course, they work through their gender differences and stuff, but they fall in love, and they learn to work as a team in mining this ore and shoveling the sand for years. They’ve got the system down. They’ve got it just right. They work as a team, and they’re so in love.

Then one day this couple is doing their thing—mining the ore and shoveling the sand—and all of a sudden someone comes to the mouth of their house, and they say, "Hey! We’re here to rescue you! Come on! You’re free!"

And the couple at first is really excited about being free. They get to the doorstep of the house, and they look at each other. They look at how in love they are, and they realize what a life they’ve built—shoveling sand and mining the ore—and they decide to stay.

And then Roz looked at me, like, “Isn’t that profound?”

I said, “What’s profound?”

She said, “Well, the meaning of the story is that you can find purpose is anything. You can make any mundane existence meaningful. Isn’t that profound?”

I thought, Wow! If this is all secular psychology has to offer, we’re in trouble!

Now I remember that story that she told me so many years ago—not because it had a profound meaning to her, but because it had a very different meaning to me.

The moral of the story to me was that here was a person, here was a couple in captivity that learned to be comfortable in captivity. When they were offered the freedom, they chose to stay in captivity because they were good at it.

And the Lord started convicting me about how He came to set me free. He not only came to set me free from my sin, but He came to set me free from the captivity of this world. But I can become so comfortable in the captivity of this world that I don’t want to be free. It feels comfortable to mine the ore and shovel sand because I’m good at it.

I wonder if you feel somewhat that same way?

As I thought about the kind of captivity that we as Christians find ourselves in—Satan is so deceptive that he’ll take truth and mix it with a lie. If we look throughout Scripture, Satan will always take what’s going on in culture, and he’ll mix it with Christianity. He’ll mix it with godly things so that we can’t tell the truth from the lie.

Think about it: In the Old Testament, what was the culture then? What kind of paganism were the Jews dealing with then? Idolatry, right? They were worshiping the sun. They were worshiping carved images.

We look at that, and we go, “How could they fall into that trap? I mean, that’s so dumb! Who bows down to a statue of something?”

But if you look at the Old Testament, you see that the believers of God were constantly mixing the idolatry of their culture with sacred things. They worshiped God in even pagan ways. They got all mixed up.

Then you look at the New Testament believers. What did they struggle with? Anybody know? Yell it out. Legalism. That’s what they really struggled with. They had the paganism of the Roman culture, but Paul and the other writers of the Epistles would consistently tell them, “Drop the legalism. Drop the Judaism, and follow Christ.”

So we look at our culture, and what do we struggle with? What kind of culture do we live in? Materialism, definitely, but I think it goes even beyond that.

Paul defines the kinds of things that we live in when he wrote his letter to Timothy. It says in 2 Timothy  3—let me just read this for you, and you tell me if this is where we live in.

But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power (vv. 1–5).

Now, does that describe the culture in which we live? Think about how many of those things that Paul wrote have to do with self-esteem, humanism, feeling good about who we are. I’m a clinical psychologist, and I’m saying this because this is my field, but Paul is saying this is the wickedness that we’ll have to deal with in the last days, which we’re in. We’ll be proud. We’ll be conceited. We’ll be lovers of pleasure. We’ll be arrogant. We’ll be boastful.

The culture that we fight in our time is humanism. What Satan has done is what he’s continued to do is to take the culture and deceive us into thinking that we can Christianize the culture. Really, ladies, what we live in today is Christian humanism.

And we’re in bondage. We are shoveling sand just like that poor guy that got stuck in the desert, and we don’t even know it.

What I want to share with you is just a little bit about how we recognize that kind of bondage that each one of us has to struggle through how we get free from all of that.

I want to use a book that I just think is so profound—it’s a children’s book by Max Lucado. Some of you might be familiar with it. It’s called You Are Special. Any of you know this book right here? Isn’t it a great book? I could write a book that’s 400 pages long and not be as profound as this one. I’m not going to read the whole thing to you, but I’ll just tell you what it’s about because there’s profound truth about this particular topic in this book.

Lucado talks about these people that are called Wemmicks. Wemmicks are wooden people. They’re like puppets, and they’re made by a woodmaker named Eli. They all live in this village, and they go about their jobs and their days just like we do. They have relationships just like we do.

And Wemmicks have this special thing that they do all day as they go throughout their life. Every Wemmick carries around a box just like this. Everywhere they go they carry around a box. Inside the box are two different kinds of stickers. There is a gold star sticker, and there is a gray dot sticker.

The Wemmicks’ job is you go throughout your days and you put stickers on each other. You get gold star stickers when you do something really good. If you look really great that day—your wood is really smooth, and there are no chips—and you’re just performing really well, the Wemmick people will come up and just stick gold stars on you.

You get gray dot stickers when you make mistakes. If you’re clumsy, if you have a bad day, if your jeans don’t fit quite so well, if you’ve got marks on your paint and your wood is chipped, people give these gray dots to you.

Max Lucado tells a story about one particular Wemmick named Punchinello. Poor Punchinello, he just couldn’t get a gold sticker to save his life. I mean, this guy was just made for gray dots. Everywhere he went, he was tripping, he was just messing up, he had no talents, and people would just stop and give him gray dots, gray dots, gray dots. And it said that he had so many gray dots that some people would just go up and give him a gray dot just because he had so many other gray dots.

Poor Punchinello was going through life, and he was so depressed. He can’t get a gold star, and he just feels terrible about himself. Then he runs into this Wemmick named Lucia, and Lucia has no stickers on her. She doesn’t have gold stars, and she doesn’t have gray dots.

And he says to her, “How in the world have you managed to get no stickers?”

She says, “Well, that’s easy. I go to talk to my Maker Eli up on the hill. He tells me what he thinks, and the stickers don’t stick. They just fall off. People try to give me stickers, but they don’t stick.”

I love that illustration because we all have one of these, and unless you were very, very, very intentional about leaving yours in the hotel room today, you brought it with you. And even as you’ve gone throughout this conference—that is a time and place set apart for God to work—I bet you’ve felt stickers.

I’ve felt that there have been times—maybe over lunch, or sharing with the people that you came with, or meeting new people—where you’ve felt stickers put on you. You’ve felt gold star stickers because you lost thirty pounds, or your hair just looks great today, or you could share about a success at work, or God’s working in your life, and you felt gold stars—people just sticking them on you.

Or maybe you’ve felt gray dot stickers. You had somebody ask you, “Are you married?” And you said, “Well, I’m divorced.” And you felt an immediate gray dot, like somehow you don’t rate as much anymore.

Or they asked you about your children, and you had to talk about how maybe one’s rebelling and walking away from God.

Or they asked you what you do, and you say, “Aw, I’m just a mom.” And you felt like the gray dots were coming.

You guys know what I’m talking about? Everywhere you go, people carry these. And depending on the environment that you’re in, you get gold stars for different things. We have been raised in a culture that is all about these, and we’re already giving them to our kids.

Why do crazy parents like myself drive hours and spend thousands of dollars on athletics for five and six year olds? Because we’re teaching them to get gold stars. And why do you freak out when your kids get a B or a C? Because that’s a gray dot. We’re training our kids from the time they’re really little, “This is how you get gold stars. This is how you can be special in our world.” Because that’s the only thing we know.

Jesus came to get rid of this. He says there are no superstars. He is not a respecter of persons. He does not need talented people. He does not need beautiful people. He sees you for who you are. But you know what we’ve done as Christians instead of accepting that? We have made Christian stickers! We give Christian gold stars and gray dots. You just kind of slip it in. “In my quiet time this morning at 4:30, I was just with the Lord . . .” and you just feel the gold stars. Don’t you? (Laughter)

There are certain things that you would never say in your church or among your Christian friends, because you know you’d get a gray dot. You’d never admit to watching a certain show. You’d never admit to what you just said to your husband last night because you would get a Christian gray dot.

And this has gone on, really, for centuries. That’s what the Pharisees did. They created their own system of worth and value based on performance and based on what they thought was religious service and pleasing God. Who did Jesus condemn the most when He came? The Pharisees.

Ladies, let me tell you something: If Satan cannot have our souls, he is perfectly happy to keep us useless and playing the world’s games. Even if we’re doing it while doing Christian things, we’re as useless as the guy shoveling sand underneath the desert with the ability to be free, but we don’t even know it.

You could be doing all the right things—you could be spending time in God’s Word; you could be raising a godly heritage; you could be serving the Lord—but it could all be based on your fear of “Who am I? Does God notice me? How do I stack up among other people?”

When I really stop and think about the energy that this takes, there have been years of my life where I’d say 80–90 percent of my energies were about this, and there still could be weeks and months where that’s very true.

If you think it’s bad just in normal life, then when God puts you in a place of Christian ministry, it just gets magnified. There are still gold stars, and there are still gray dots, but they hurt a lot more, and they feel a lot better.

When the Lord called me to Focus on the Family about three years ago, I found myself sitting in the chair that Dr. James Dobson sat in. I thought, How in the world did I get here? Let me tell you something, when you’re on the radio, people feel very free to email and tell you exactly what they think of you. (Laughter) They can’t see your face. They don’t think you’re a real person. You’re a voice.

So I started getting gold stars, and I felt really good. Then I started getting gray dots, and I felt really bad. Let me read just one comment that a listener wrote in when I first got on the radio: “Dr. Juli Slattery does not have a radio voice." (Laughter) Oh, it gets better! "It grates on the ears. I’ve personally changed to a different radio station when she comes on even though the topic may interest me. Unless changes are made to focus on the talent side, I don’t see the future for Focus as being promising. Love, Mom.” (Laughter) No.

But when I started getting emails like that and letters like that—man, they hurt! But as much as these hurt, let me tell you, the gold stars are more dangerous. Some of you are covered with gray dots right now, and you feel depressed. You can’t imagine that God loves you, or that you’re as precious in His sight as Nancy Leigh DeMoss is. You can’t get that. But the Bible says it’s true.

Others of you are covered with gold stars, and you can’t grasp the truth of who you are. God wants you to be free. He wants me to be free. He doesn’t want us to be stuck in this.

And, ladies, I’ve just spent years trying to peel the stickers off and not care about them. I’ve said, “God, would You set me free from this? I don’t want to be concerned about what people think all the time. I don’t want to be stuck in this.”

Here are a few telltale signs that we’re stuck on the stickers. If you can sense this, if you feel this, this is God saying, “I want to set you free.”

• Do you have a fear of failure?
• Do you have a fear of being exposed or humiliating yourself in front of other people?
• Are you concerned about the praise and the rejection of other people, of men and women?
• Do you stay up at night sometimes wondering what people thought about what you said? Oh, I shouldn’t have said that. I looked like such an idiot when I did that. Why did I do that? I wonder what she thinks. Oh, he’s got to be so mad at me.

Do you have thoughts like this? Come on, do you?

Amen, yeah! I’ve been in the counseling room with lots of women. I know we all think alike. We’ve got this slavery to the concern and praise and rejection of men.

How about competition within the Body of Christ? You might feel great about what God’s doing in your life—until you see that He’s doing something greater in someone else’s life! (Laughter)

If you’re a singer and you love to sing praises to the Lord—but then another singer comes along who’s preferred over you. How does that feel?

How does it feel to be neglected? How does it feel when someone else is exalted?

Paul talks about us devouring each other, because there’s competition within the Body. This is not how we are to live—and I’m right there with you. I’ve struggled with this.

I can remember the irony of this as I was working through the whole concept of “beyond the masquerade.” I started to write a book on it—this was probably five or six years ago—and before I came to Focus on the Family, they were interested in publishing this new book I was writing called Beyond the Masquerade.

How you get a book published is the editor, the publishers, they ask you questions like, “Well, how many books did your other books sell?” At this point I had written two other books, one on marriage, one on parenting. I’m going through the questions that they ask me, and the marriage book had sold pretty well, and I knew that they were pretty good numbers, so I gave them the number of that.

But the parenting book, Guilt-Free Motherhood, hadn’t sold very well, and I was afraid that if I told them how many that book sold, that they wouldn’t want to publish my book. So I inflated the numbers. I don’t know the exact number, but I kind of pushed it up about 2,000 or 3,000. (Laughter) Okay, now, here I am, ladies, writing a book called Beyond the Masquerade with a sub-title Unveiling the Authentic You (laughter)—and I’m lying to the publisher because I don’t think God can get it published if I don’t lie!

So I went away that weekend just to seek the Lord about the book, and I’m writing . . . and, yeah, God convicted me. He showed me just how much I’m two-faced and how much I try to please Him and at the same time, I fall right back into this.

So I said, “Okay, God, I won’t do that again.”

He said, “No, no, no, no, Juli. You need to be honest, be authentic, and trust Me.”

So I had to call that editor and not say I made a mistake on the numbers, but to say, “I lied, and I’m sorry I lied. Here’s how many books sold.”

And they published it, by God’s grace!

And ladies, you might not relate to that exact example, but I bet there are areas in your life where you feel the same way.

Who has their driver’s license with them? Pull out your driver’s license for a minute. There’s a number there under “weight.” (Laughter) Yeah, okay. Look at that number beside “weight.” How many of you actually weigh what it says? A couple of you. I weigh what mine says when I’ve had the flu for three days, in the morning, without a stitch of clothing on! (Laughter)

Have you ever noticed when you replay a story of a conflict that you and your husband had, you kind of change the details a little bit to make him look a lot worse and you a lot better?

We do this all the time! We’re not authentic because we’re afraid of the gray dots, and we so long for the gold stars. So I’ve been asking the Lord for years, “Would You set me free? Would You set me free, and when You show me freedom, would You give me the courage to actually step out and live differently?”

Ladies, we are in a battle. We are in a spiritual battle, and we’re playing the devil’s game. Jesus wants to free us so that we can do His work.

As I’ve prayed, “Lord, would You set me free? Would You show me how to get free?” He’s brought me time and time again to the apostle Paul who made some pretty outlandish statements about how free he was from the world’s thinking—particularly when it pertains to self-esteem and stickers.

Just look at some of the things that he wrote:

“From now on, we regard no one from a worldly point of view” (2 Cor. 5:16). We don’t see anyone the way the world sees them.

“Therefore, I will boast in my weakness so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (2 Cor. 11:30). Have you ever boasted in weakness? Do you even know what that would look like—to ask for people to give you gray dots so that Christ may be glorified in you?

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility, value others above yourself” (Phil. 2:3).

And this one takes the cake: “As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or from anyone else” (1 Thess. 2:6).

How did he get to that point where he could say this? I mean, who was this man? Paul, what’s your secret?

I’ve asked the Lord, “God, would You show me what Paul’s secret was? Would You show me how to be free the way Paul was free?”

If you have your Bibles, would you turn with me to Philippians 3, because we see the secret of Paul’s freedom in this one passage.

Paul starts out by saying, “Okay, you guys like stickers? I loved them! And I was covered with gold stars!” He reads his resumé. He says, “You guys put confidence in the flesh? I know how to play that game, and I played it better than any of you.”

Let me just read what he wrote:

If anyone else thinks he has reason to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, I was faultless (vv. 4–6).

All right—time-out there for a minute, because I read that, and I’m like, “So? You were circumcised; you were a Hebrew of Hebrews—that means nothing to us.” But if we were to translate what he was saying into our culture, he would be saying something like this:

You guys think you got it right? I am the son of Billy Graham, and I went to Harvard, and I went to Oxford, and I’ve written twenty books, and I’ve been on the 700 Club, and I fight for life.

I mean, he’s listing all these things that in his society would lift someone high and say, “That’s a religious leader. That’s somebody covered with gold stars.”

And Paul was covered with them. He says in the book of Galatians that he was advancing in Judaism far beyond anyone his age. He was covered with gold stars, and I’m betting that he was pretty addicted to them.

So you think you and I are addicted to gold stars? He was right there, and he knew how to get them. But he also knew how to be free. Let me keep reading about how he got free.

But whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss considered to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christand be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ (vv. 7–9).

All right, now Paul says here for a minute, “I used to really value this. I used to value my education. I used to value my reputation. I used to value what people thought of me, and that I was exalted above other people. And now it’s rubbish. Not only have I walked away from it, I consider it to be rubbish.”

I want you to think for a minute all the things that you do to get gold stars—all the accomplishments, all the things that you rely on. Can you imagine, if you really got to the point where you could actually say, “Those are rubbish. I don’t want them anymore. I’m free from the hold of money and status and esteem and what people think. I’m free.”

That’s what Paul said. You know how he was able to say that? Here’s the key: “Compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

When God starts to reveal to us the secret of the glory of Jesus Christ, not just in theology, but personally, when we can see who Jesus Christ is, when we can abide in Him and pursue Him, you don’t have to try to peel off the stickers anymore because . . . they’re stupid, they’re dumb.

Ladies, let me make this personal for you for a minute. I’m a mom. I’ve got three boys, and I struggle with this as well. How many Christians miss church on Sunday because they’re driving their kids to sporting events or music events because they believe that what’s in here is more valuable to their children than knowing Christ Jesus our Lord?

How many of us spend time on physical beauty and obsession with health at the expense of our time with God because we believe that what’s in here, what we can earn here is more valuable than what we can earn from knowing Christ?

Now Paul had the amazing blessing of seeing Christ Jesus face-to-face. He was confronted in the flesh with Christ Jesus, and all of a sudden, nothing that mattered anymore meant anything to him.

How do we get that? How do we get to the point that we hunger for Jesus, and we see Him like Paul saw Him? We say, “Oh, that’s just the apostle Paul. I mean, he’s like a special dude. He doesn’t relate to us.”

But think about it—the same Jesus that appeared to Paul is the One that we kneel before, and the same Spirit that fell on Paul and gave him truth and gave him conviction and changed his life is the Holy Spirit that is here today and that draws you and me—the same God.  He’s no less powerful than He was in the life of the apostle Paul.

The question is: Where are our hearts? Are we seekers?

Now the Lord works in mysterious ways, and He got my attention in a very unusual way when I started to ask Him, “How do I get rid of this? How do I know You, Lord?” It’s wild what He did.

About two years ago my husband says to me out of the blue, “Hey, Jules, let’s do this cool new exercise program called P90X. (Laughter) How many of you know P90X? “It’s like . . . you know, it’s really cool. It’s called . . . like muscle confusion.”

“I don’t want my muscles to be confused. You can do that, Mike.”

He says, “No, it will be really fun. We’ll do it together. We’ll get in shape together.”

I’m like, “What are you trying to tell me?”  So I’m saying, “Oh, I don’t want . . . I don’t have time for this. I’m working. We have three boys.”

He says, “No, we’ll get up really early in the morning.”

I’m like, “You’re not making this sound fun at all.”

“It’ll be really romantic. We’ll set together.” (Laughter)

So I kind of resisted for a while, and then finally I gave in. We started doing P90X, getting up at like 4:35 in the morning—really fun. It’s an hour every day for ninety days. For those of you who don’t know about it, it’s an intense workout.

So for the first few days at 5 or 6 in the morning, you feel like you’re going to puke, but you’re too tired to puke. After the first week, Mike stops. He stays in bed, sleeping in. But I’m that Type A, compulsive personality—I’ve got to earn my gold stars and finish all ninety days. (Laughter)

So I do all ninety days (applause)—yeah—so, toward the end of the ninety days, I’m starting to notice that my body is changing—amazing. I have triceps and biceps that I didn’t know were there. I have the definition of the quadriceps, they’re just legs. I mean, muscle is here. And my teenage boys can’t quite push me around as much. I didn’t quite have a six-pack, but at least a two-pack. (Laughter) I can do a couple of pull-ups, and I can do tons of push-ups. I mean . . . can you imagine that? Just one hour a day for ninety days would transform your body like that?

For the last week of P90X, I’d come up and be done around 5:36 in the morning to get ready for work and the kids ready for school. I just heard the Lord say to me, “That’s great, Juli. What would happen if you did this spiritually? Would you be willing to do a spiritual P90X—an hour a day just with Me?”

I started thinking, Wow! If my body changed this much … I mean, Paul said that physical discipline is of little value, but spiritual discipline is of great value. So I started wondering, What would happen? If I saw this much transformation from one hour a day in my physical body, what would happen if I took my walk with the Lord that seriously? Would I have, like, buffed faith? (Laughter)

What would happen? I mean, really? If you took your relationship with God that seriously, what do you think would change? Do you have faith to believe that it would transform your life and your faith as much as something like P90X would transform your body?

So I took God up on the offer. I’m like, “Okay. You taught me for ninety days to get up at 4:30 in the morning—without an alarm clock.” Now, I’m not a morning person, but I just started waking up. “I’ll wake up, and I’ll begin spending time with You.”

But with P90X, I could put the DVD in, and the guy told me what to do. I just followed the instructions. But when you do that with God, what do you do? I mean, what? I started asking,  “God, what do You want me to do?” I didn’t even know where to start.

I just started getting up in the morning before anybody else got up. It was quiet. I’d say, “Okay, God, I’m here. Tell me what to do. I know how to do push-ups, but how do I transfer this into seeking You?”

Within the first week, the Lord started prompting my heart with a question . . . do you know that God speaks? If we’re quiet enough, do you know that He speaks to us? He reminded me of the verse that says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Matt. 22:37).

As I meditated on that verse, I realized that I knew how to love God with all my strength and with all my mind and with all my soul. I mean, I’m a disciplined worker for the Lord. But I started asking God: “I don’t know if I know how to love You with my heart. I’m not that emotional, warm-fuzzy person. I feel like I’m always at a distance serving You. What would it look like for me to love You passionately with all my heart?”

I started asking that question. Now when I worked at Focus on the Family, I got to interview  a lot of really cool, amazing Christian people. Nancy Leigh DeMoss is one of them, and a lot of the speakers here, boy! I get to ask them my questions.

People will sometimes say to me, “Wow! You always ask my question.”

I go, “It’s MY question!”

“Let me ask you, Dr. Leman, hypothetically, if you had three boys . . .” (Laughter)

But around this same time that I started my spiritual P90X, I interviewed a woman named Linda Dillow. Any of you familiar with Linda’s work? Just a really godly woman. You feel like you’re walking with a modern-day saint when you talk to her. She just loves the Lord so much.

She connected with me when I interviewed with her, and we started emailing. She invited me to go on a prayer retreat with her—not just a prayer retreat—a prayer and fasting retreat with her, just me and her. I don’t know her very well, and I go, “Okay, this is a little weird, but I want to go deeper with God. This is a woman of God, so I’m going to go.”

So we go up to this mountain retreat—prayer and fasting retreat. I hear Linda talking, just sharing her testimony with me. She’s saying things like, “Jesus is my Beloved. He’s my Best Friend. I always loved God, but I’ve fallen in love with God.”

This is just the way she would talk about the Lord, and I’m thinking, All right. That’s weird, but I want to be weird like that—not just to say those things, but to mean them from my heart. I want to see Christ the way she sees Christ. I want to have a passion for the Lord the way I see in her life.

And the Lord did something amazing to me on that one retreat—prayer and fasting retreat. I don’t know how to explain it theologically other than to say the Holy Spirit just got me in a new way, in a twenty-four-hour period of time.

I went home from that retreat, and I couldn’t not seek God. I couldn’t read a book. I couldn’t watch a movie. I couldn’t listen to anything else unless it was worship music. I had to seek the face of God. It wasn’t a discipline. It was a compulsion. I had to know God, and it was His grace that made me so hungry for Him. It’s the grace He wants to give you to make you so hungry for Him that you feel like you can’t go a moment without Him.

And when that happened to me, three specific things began to change in my life, and I’m going to share these three things. I’m just sharing my journey with you. What the Lord did in my life transformed everything.

That same transforming power might not come to you through P90X—I don’t know, but I know God wants to give it to you because He says in His Word, “If you ask anything, I will give it to you. I will give you My Holy Spirit in abundance to cause you to seek My face.”

The three things that changed in my life:

The first one was absolute obedience. I’ve been a Christian since the time I was a little girl, and I would say that I’ve been a servant of God since I was a little girl. I knew how to get the spiritual stickers, and I really believed that God probably gave gold stars and gray dots. I obeyed because I wanted so badly for Him to give me gold stars. I wanted to be His favorite. I wanted to get His attention so badly that I obeyed.

But this kind of heart of obedience that God calls us to is not about gold stars, because He doesn’t give them out. This is not His way.

The kind of obedience that He was calling me to is an obedience of holiness because when we’re holy, when God calls us to holiness, we know Him better.

Let me just read from the book of John something that I think explains this, something that Jesus said: “Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me [with their whole heart—I put that in]. He loves me and will be loved by My Father, and I, too, will love him and show Myself to him.”

Now think about that for a minute: The way we show God love is to obey His commands, and it says, “If you obey My commands, I will show Myself to you”—like I did with Paul. I’ll reveal Myself to you.” When we obey God, we begin to see more of Him.

I started to see that I’m like a 95 percent obedient Christian. You guys know what I mean? I mean, you sit here, and you go, “Yeah, okay, I can do this and that and that.” You’re at that 95 percent, and then you hit this one area, and you’re like, “Oh, no. Not that, God. I’m not going there.”

You know the whole submission thing to my husband? You know, that’s the 5 percent. I reserve the right to say, “I’ve got a special case here.” (Laughter)

Or you know the whole, you-always-have-to-tell-the-truth thing? Nah! Most of the time I tell the truth. The Lord started to show me that, again, I’m a 95 percent obedient Christian. He started to ask, “Will you be 100 percent obedient? Will you, in the secret choices that you make, that no one sees, will you choose Me?”

What percent do you obey God? If you’re not sure, ask Him. Are you a 99 percent obedient Christian? God says, “If you want to see My face, obey Me in everything.”

The Lord started to show me that if I don’t listen to what He has already spoken, why would He speak more? If we don’t respond to what He’s already revealed, why would He reveal more?

When you’re obedient and you walk in obedience and you pursue holiness—not to get stars—but you pursue holiness in the secret places of your heart because you just want to know God, He begins to reveal Himself in amazing ways.

And whatever He’s asking you in obedience to give up, you’ll look back on it, and you’ll say, “It was rubbish. Why was I hanging on to it?”

What are you hanging on to? What is it Satan’s got so wrapped around you that you feel like you can’t give it up? Whatever it is, let it go. And if you don’t know how to let it go, ask someone. Confess your sin. Ask for help. Ask the Lord because He’ll give you the power to obey Him completely.

The second thing that changed is that my worship changed. I was raised in the normal Christian church, and I knew how to worship on Sunday. Yeah, I heard all the things about how worship is a way of life, but I really didn’t get it. Part of my spiritual P90X of what I would start to do every morning was I would start by getting on my knees, as a display of humility and worship before the Lord, and just play worship music. That’s just what I did.

That’s what the Lord led me to do. I’d just seek the face of God, just focus my mind first thing in the morning on, “God, would You be high and lifted up? Would You be exalted? Would You just open my eyes to You?”

Why do you think church service starts with worship? Because it prepares our hearts for whatever truth God wants to give us. The same is true in our personal life and in our daily life. Worshiping the King and seeing His glory prepares your heart for whatever you’re going to face that day.

Instead of seeing worship as just kind of part of what Christians are supposed to do, God started to show me that my work is worship. The battle is worship, because if I can see the glory of God every day, then I won’t live for my own glory. But if I don’t see the glory of God, I will live for my glory. I will be concerned about what people think. I will be concerned about my own name.

Your battle is worship, and when you win the battle, the fight to see the glory of God—and ladies, it is a fight some days to see the glory of God. Do you know what that fight feels like? The battle to not be distracted, to not be deceived, but to fight to see the glory of God and to feel His presence and to know Him. When you fight that, you’ve won, and the rest of your day is just walking out the victory.

The Lord started to show me the value of worship and how every day has to start with worship. And, again, I’m just speaking spiritually, and from what He’s shown me; this is personally. How He works in your life is going to be very personal as well. But when we look at worship in the Scriptures, you know one thing I noticed? People who became worshipers got gray dots.

I mean, think of Mary and Martha that Nancy shared the other day. Her sister is giving her gray dots.

Think about King David who comes into Jerusalem dancing and worshiping. His wife gives him gray dots.

If you become a woman of worship and you do warfare on your knees, worshiping the King, expect that people will give you gray dots—not the world—expect it maybe from the people closest to you.

But the beautiful thing in Scripture is that God always defends His worshipers. You don’t have to say a word. Jesus defended Mary. Jesus defended David. Jesus defends His worshipers. Your work is worship. You’re not ready to work until you’ve worshiped. Start there and end there.

Then the final thing the Lord did is He changed the way that I pray. I want to read the continuation of Philippians 3 about how Paul prayed. I’m going to pick up where I left off and back up a little bit.

I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith (vv. 7–9).

Now, this is Paul’s prayer: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection of the dead” (vv. 10–11).

Now I’m guessing that most of you have read that passage before, right? You might have even memorized it, but have you ever meditated on it?

When God began to teach me some of these deep things, I spent about six months meditating on that one passage about how Paul prayed. He prayed that he would know the power of Christ’s resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings.

And ladies, we know really well how to pray that we would know the power of Christ’s resurrection. You know how to pray that. You know how to pray, “Oh God, bring Your resurrection power into my marriage. Bring Your resurrection power into my teenager. Let them get out of bed today. Bring Your resurrection power into my ministry and my work, and let me see You work. Let me see Your power at work.”

We know how to pray that. But we don’t know how to pray that we would know the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. I mean, we might know, “Okay, if hard things come along, okay, God, I can know the fellowship of Your sufferings.” But have you ever prayed that way? Who prays that way?

Have you ever had a class on, “How do you pray for the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings?” That would go over really well, wouldn’t it?

But here’s the secret of what Paul prays: You will never find one of those without the other. You cannot know the resurrection power of God in your life until you also know the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings. And you cannot know the fellowship of His sufferings without the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit filling you. They go together.

We need to learn to pray as Paul prayed. Now why would we do that? How do we do that? Do we just pray, “God help me to suffer"? I mean, that just sounds weird. Who wants to pray to suffer?

I began to ask, “Okay, God. What does it mean? Why would I want to know the fellowship of knowing Your sufferings and sharing Your sufferings?” And the Lord started to show me some very realistic ways that I could begin praying like that. They’re scary prayers.

Have you ever prayed, “Lord, would You humble me?” You get goosebumps when you even think about that. Who wants that? You know why we don’t want it? Because it means death to self. But the only reason you would pray that is because you have faith that if you humble yourself before the Lord, He will exalt you, that if you put to death self, that there will be a new life that fills you that can’t even compare to what that was. Like Paul, you’ll say, “What I was clinging to was rubbish.”

You might begin to pray, “Lord, would You help me see the pain of those around me and help me not to look away?” Do you have the courage to pray like that?

I prayed a pretty dangerous prayer a few weeks ago. I was reading a devotional on the pattern of iniquities in our life and about how sin is something you do and iniquity is like the stream of who you are. And so I just naively prayed, “Lord, would You reveal to me today the pattern of iniquity in my life?”

Ladies, I don’t like myself anymore! What He showed me was my heart was yuck. Ewww! He answered that prayer. He wants us to pray that way—not so that we’re stuck, depressed, filled with gray dots, but so that His resurrection power can live in us.

If you want resurrection power in your life, in your walk with God, in your marriage, in your parenting, are you willing to pray that God would put self to death so that He would live through you? Because that’s the way out of that dungeon of shoveling sand. That’s the way out.

Are you too scared to put your shovel down? Do you have enough faith to walk with Jesus and say, “I want to be free. I want to be used of You—not of my own accord, but with Your power”? Are you willing to do that? You have hankies. Is anyone willing to do that? Because the battle is fiercer than we know, and the enemy is more evil than we know, and the time is shorter than we know, and we’re shoveling sand, and Jesus says, “Come, come work with Me.”

You don’t know what the Lord’s going to do when you step out in faith that way, when you begin to pray boldly, when you begin to worship heartily and fighting for the presence of God, and when you begin to obey wholeheartedly. I didn’t know what God would do either. But about a year into my journey of just seeking the Lord deeper—this is probably not that long ago—I started to sense Him saying to me that He was preparing me for something.

Like, “Preparing me for something? Lord, I’m already at Focus on the Family. This is my dream job. I love where I am. I’m on the radio being able to teach a lot of people, encourage a lot of people.”

He said, “No, I’m preparing you for something.”

I started asking Him, “Okay, God, what are You preparing me for?” I remember being on my knees one day and hearing the Lord just ask me a question: “Are you willing to do My work?”

I thought, “God, I am doing Your work. I’m in Christian ministry, for crying out loud.” (Laughter)

But He was asking a different question: “Are you ready to do My work? Will You join Me in My work?” He was preparing a new work for me—a work right from His heart to just minister to women in particular on issues of sexual intimacy and sexual healing.

It’s not what I signed up for, but I’m like, “Okay, God, I’ll do this. I’ll step in faith.”

He began showing me what this new work was. About six months ago He was showing me that He was calling me away from Focus on the Family—the job that I loved, and a job that had lots of stickers. But He had something new for me to do, and He asked me to walk away from Focus.

And so I left about two months ago to start a new ministry with Linda Dillow called Authentic Intimacy. And I’ll tell you, I don’t know where we’re going other than this is God’s work.

I don’t know what He’ll do in your life, but I think about two years ago when He asked me to do spiritual P90X, and I took that one little baby step of obedience and faith and how He poured His Spirit out.

What’s the step He’s asking you today? You’re going to go home, and you’re not going to have conference speakers yelling at you all day anymore. You’re going to go home with a spiritual high that can easily nose dive, but you’re also going home with the Spirit of the living God who will continue to call you deeper, to call you to throw away the shovel, to stop shoveling sand, to stop playing the world’s game, and to seek Him earnestly.

Will you step out? Will you step out and see what He’ll do? Let’s pray.

Lord God, we thank You and we praise You that You are the God of Paul, and You are the God of David. You are the God of Abraham, and You are my God. You are our God, and, Lord, Your Spirit is powerful enough to break any bondage, including the friendly bondage and captivity of the game of stickers.

God, would You break bondage right here today? Would You break it? We want to be free. We want to be Yours. We want to hear Your voice. We want to do Your work. But in our own strength, we just can’t get free.

Lord, I pray that You would work in each heart today exactly the way You want. If there’s a step of obedience that You would ask each woman to do personally, would You let her know what that is? Maybe it’s getting up early in the morning to seek You. Maybe it’s giving up an addiction or confessing a sin. Maybe it’s asking forgiveness of someone that she’s held a grudge to for way too long.

Lord, would You make us 100 percent obedient Christians who worship You, who seek You, and who are willing to pray boldly because we know the blessing that You pour on those who share in the fellowship of Your suffering?

God, would You be glorified? Would You use us? Will we be Your mighty weapons and Your beloved children? In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.