A try-hard girl quits the “do more” life by Lea Turner

Sweet reader friends, I don’t allow just anyone the keys to the blog, but in my friend Lea Turner, you’ll find someone kind, trustworthy, and wired just like you. Lea and her husband are raising five children in Mississippi so if she knows what it’s like to have a house that’s more loud than quiet and a schedule more busy than still. If your heart longs for truth about how a real God meets us in our real life, you’ll want to  follow Lea on her blog. 

One Saturday, eight years ago, I sat in our screened in porch of our three- bedroom ranch, questioning my faith for the first time.

“Is this whole Christian thing working for me?”

I was thirty-one years old, had been a Christian since I was a teenager. I believed the Bible, but was it true for me? I certainly didn’t feel free, the way we sang at church.

Except something kept pushing me forward to do more and be more. Instead of feeling victorious and chosen as the Bible portrayed, I felt tired, frightened, and heavy from my expectations.

Guilt and condemnation were drowning out the voice of freedom. My flaws and struggles were all I could see as I opened the Bible and sat in church. Spending all my days covering the vast expanse between all I was and all I thought I should be was exhausting.

To be honest, I was ready to give up on this man named Jesus.

I couldn’t get it together enough to make Him happy. I was a law-abiding citizen about to throw in the towel.

Sure I looked great on the outside. However, I was dying on the inside all the while keeping all the laws and rules. When the church doors were open, I had the best clothes on with the biggest smile and all the perfect words to say and not to say.

I had the Christian thing down to a science. Knowing all the great Christian clichés and knowing when to say them at all the right times. Leading a Bible study, attending a prayer group, and speaking of Jesus as if He was my friend. All the while dying inside and in need of a Savior. I faked it. Except I didn’t know I was faking it, because this is the way I perceived Christianity: obedience to the law.

I grew up in church. I learned early on I was loved for what I did, not for who I was. “Saved” in a great church, at the age of 11. The people there loved God but believed a lie: God’s love depended on our actions. This lie seeped into everything I did.

I began serving a God who demanded of me rather than loved me.

Never being able to live up to His expectations left a void for acceptance. In my teenage years, I filled it with boys until I married and my achievements filled the emptiness I often felt inside. I got so used to people pleasing.

I read and studied Christian self-help books in search of how to become a “better Christian.” They ranged from how to improve my marriage, discipline my children, organize my home, transform my finances, and balance my schedule.

When I didn’t measure up to what the books promised, I felt like I had failed. I rested in my achievements rather than resting in the finished work of the cross.

Serving a far-off God who made high demands left me depleted. Desperately trying to live up to His claims because after all, He had made a huge sacrifice for me.

On the porch several years ago, grace walked in.

I’m not sure if it was my questioning or my thirst for more, but I began to realize my achievements could not save me. I was living day-in and day-out trying to be perfect for others to see Jesus. Perfection doesn’t draw the lost to the gospel, the Holy Spirit does.

As I read the Bible with fresh eyes, I understood, for the first time, my efforts of the flesh did not produce fruit. Depending on my own efforts left me feeling empty and longing for something more…acceptance. I blamed God thinking He failed me because my formula for success did not work.

“After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?” Galatians 3:3.

My soul was hungry for Father God’s never-ending love like never before. I read and studied the Word because I wanted to experience more of Him, not to check it off my list or to score brownie points. As I spent time with Him, I felt His love swallow up the pain of my failures and disappointments.

I will never forget that day on the porch where the Holy Spirit drew near to my brokenness and wrapped me in the Father’s love like a warm blanket. Our love affair is yet to cease, this is only the beginning.

I am no longer a slave to sin, but a daughter of the Most-High God!

I believe right now that the Holy Spirit is beckoning women to forsake their achievements and lay down the lie that their accomplishments or the praises of people shape their identity. He is calling us to be adopted into His family and be dependent on His grace!

God longs for us to turn to Him and listen to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit speak identity and purpose over us. He’s wooing our hearts to quiet the noise of the world to hear the Spirit. How weary we become when we do not surrender to the Holy Spirit’s leading.

Today we choose to lay down the law and accept grace. In the surrendering, we find rest and the life of joy and freedom God intends for us.

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