submission – Sarah Guldalian

For the Creatives

Someone told you that you were naive.
Somebody said you are too idealistic.
Someone told you that you’re too subjective.
Somebody said to use your head instead of your heart.
Someone told you that you are too right-brained.
Somebody told you to use logic.
Someone said you are too empathetic.
Somebody told you to quit being so nice.
Someone said you care too much.
Somebody told you that you are too passionate.

And so, you tried to figure it out — how to be “smarter,” less intuitive, more objective, realistic, more logical, to fit into the structure… And you took it too far.

You quit dreaming, quit listening with tenderness, quit connecting, hid your heart, led with facts, numbers and proof. In doing so, you lost your color, denied your gift of intuition, disregarded your creativity. You quit dreaming… and you lost yourself. Now you are just surviving.

I am here to encourage you to stop settling for survival.

Sometimes, in order to adult, we tell ourselves what we “should” think instead of admitting (even to ourselves) how we really feel. In order to survive, we morph our thoughts, our gifts, and our personalities to fit into a paradigm of who we (or others) think we should be. We begin to block our feelings to play the part — to stay in character. But when we quit allowing ourselves to feel, we lock up and hold on, instead of surrendering. We hide instead of healing. And in doing so, we begin to simply survive.

But survival is basic. Surviving is the lowest level of living. There is more than that — even so much more if we surrender, have faith, heal, and dare to dream.

You have to quit settling for survival. You have to quit allowing your thoughts and actions to be guided by societal paradigms. Until you surrender what you “should” be and truly adopt who God uniquely created you to be, you will barely hang on. But when you surrender what others think and begin to flow in the gifts God has given you, you will experience a new level of personal freedom, healthier relationships in your life, and even greater effectiveness on mission.

Start dreaming again. You aren’t naive. You aren’t stupid. You aren’t idealistic. You are creative, caring, and loving like your heavenly Father whose image you were created in. And the world needs more of Him through you. The world needs less yelling and more singing, less black and white and more color. You deserve that too.

Your talents are a gift – to you first – from God, and they are to be enjoyed. Enjoy them, and share them with the world. Go where you are greeted, and help inspire those who are uninspired but open to learn.

We need what you bring to the world. Bring it, please.

Releasing a Season

Sometimes, the old way of doing things just doesn’t work anymore. When it has been a worthy way — a system that you have loved that has served you well in the past – it is hard to accept this reality.

Before surrendering it, we try to figure out why it doesn’t work. We inspect it to diagnose it. Like a car that is no longer running smoothly, we assess if it can be fixed – and if it should be, or if we must say goodbye and start new.

We consider questions like, “What part of it is broken? What can I fix? What can I do? What part of it isn’t me but someone else?” Ultimately, does the power to fix this lie in you, with someone else, or have the circumstances changed completely?

At the end of the day, after lots of thinking, brainstorming, strategizing, and hopefully praying, you may conclude with an inconvenient but truthful answer — this system, process, relationship, position, or institution no longer works for you — not in this new season, regardless of how convenient it would be for you and for those in your life to have it work.

And in these moments – after exhausting ideas and options, after telling yourself stories – you finally come to the bottom of it. The conclusion has been drawn. At this point, you just have to say, “This is what it is. In this season, it no longer works for me.” And, as hard as that is to accept, there is something freeing in that, because that’s honesty — with yourself and with those around you.

I have been in this situation a number of key times before. And this phase – acceptance – is the hardest. It is hard not to run from it. It is hard to sit still, accept it, and breathe through it. But we must.

In that moment, where all results are in and we have come to this conclusion, we often begin to experience the painful feelings that come with loss. After all, there is grief that comes with the closing of a season; and we need to experience it to move towards closure in order to get to healing. And we can’t help but ask, “Now what?”

Well, you pray. Then you pray some more. Ask the Lord to comfort and direct you, and He will. Because, when you have a relationship with Jesus, not only can you get through this change – this loss, but you can do this well. You can walk away stronger, because of Christ in you, with greater hope for the future than you experienced before.

And when that flicker of light begins to ignite in you, called hope, you then might begin to ask Him, “Where to? What next? Essentially, “God, Help. Show me the way.”

That hope ignited through Christ can begin to burn brighter and brighter, when you invite the Holy Spirit in, and a new passion – a fire – can ignite in you greater than before. And, when it does, your questions may change to, “Why did I hold on for so long?”

What I have come to learn in my life is that, sometimes, we will hold on to an old way of doing things for far too long past the point of healthy, until we feel broken, drained, and dried, simply because it’s more convenient for others to have us live that way. When we do this, we sell ourselves out. We cut ourselves short, because we even tell ourselves lies to stay there. Yet, when we do these things for other people, in a very large way, that impacts our very souls, especially when the Lord is beckoning us to follow Him into a new season.

In this season of my life, I’m realizing that there are some things I have done out of obligation, and I’ve stuck with it… and stuck with it, and I’ve stuck with it. I’ve tried to fix it, bend it, flex it, looking at it from every angle. Yet, it’s time to release some processes, systems, and situations to see greater fruit ahead. Even more, though, I feel like I am supposed to share this message for someone(s) who needs this encouragement.

Is the Lord calling you to get really honest about something? To hand something over? To walk away? In my life, I have learned that not everything works for perpetuity. And it not only hurts you to continue down this path, but it hurts those in your life who, watching your soul ache, may receive a different version of you than you or they deserve.

At the end of the day, remember this: Your life is yours, gifted by God to steward well. And, many times, the Lord will guide you down a path that others do not understand, but that’s okay. They don’t have to. They really don’t. Maybe one day they will see and understand, and maybe one day they won’t. But you can’t keep wasting borrowed time stuck in a broken process or pattern.

It is pertinent we seek God and chase after His will for our lives in this next season – which may look different from last season – to fulfill His purposes and plans for your life. For it is there that you will experience spiritual, mental and emotional freedom. And we each deserve to be free, because Jesus paid a hefty price for us to be free and experience peace.

Does Your Soul Hurt?

Is something occupying your emotions but not clarified in your mind? Our soul hurts – it feels uneasy or weary – when our mind and our spirit is out of alignment.

For example, if we are filled with the Spirit, but our minds are filled with fleshly thoughts, we will be out of step with the Spirit, agitated and unwell. It is like a bruising that takes place as we ricochet back and forth.

The enemy is always warring for us. He wants our thoughts and our spirits to be in opposition in an attempt to damage our souls and occupy the area that is marked for God.

This is why we must surrender every area of our lives to Christ – making each to submit to Him so there is no room – no gray area – for the enemy to occupy. This is what it means to make Jesus the Lord of our lives.

When we submit our thoughts to Christ, our minds are occupied with Christ – with life.

When we submit our eyes to Christ, relinquishing the things that attempt to steal our purity, and we instead submit our gaze to Him, He creates in us a clean heart.

When we submit our will – our desires – to Christ, He stabilizes an otherwise restless spirit in us and renews a steadfast spirit within us.

When we surrender our finances to Christ, we submit authority – that we have stolen for our own – and give it back to Him. (Greed cannot reside where humility lives.)

When we surrender our health to Christ, He shows us the path to abundance.

When we submit our relationships to Christ, He heals the hurt and pain, and He shows us the path to restoration.

When we surrender our past to Christ, He removes our regret, even hurtful memories, and He gives us the ability to focus our attention, our energy, and our very hearts on the future where hope resides because of Him.

If your mind and your spirit feel out of alignment, ask Jesus to show you what part of your life – your thoughts, habits, or actions – are creating a chasm and causing heartache for you.

Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it. And ask the Lord for the strength to change. Then take personal responsibility to partner with Him in this change. He is our helper to cause change and bring about healing when we invite Him in to do so. Yet, in addition to His power at work within us, we must make a daily choice to partner with Him, disciplining our free will to get into and continue operating in alignment with His greater will and power in order to find rest for our souls.

Healing starts with surrender.

Beyond the Brand: Faithfulness over Fame

So many things are vying for our attention, serving as a distraction from the main thing — the greatest commandment— to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and to “Love your neighbor as yourself”(Jesus; Matthew 22:37-39).

Last night I had the opportunity to talk about the importance of faithfulness over fame with my friend, Tricia Bartig, on her and Jayne Patton’s show, Unshakeable Hope with Tricia & Jayne.

Of course the time flew by, but as the evening marched on, I couldn’t help but continue to think on this topic. And, as I woke up this morning, this image came to mind:

Like a Barbie isn’t human, fame isn’t natural. It’s plastic. It’s processed — made by man. A Barbie doesn’t have a real heart. It doesn’t have a real soul. It’s not really a human. It’s counterfeit.

Somewhere along the way, we have allowed ourselves to envy dolls with fake mansions and plastic cars, with fake boyfriends and phony friends. We manufacturer our own lives with brands and images, fashioned by humans in exchange for real life formed by a real eternal God.

We humans are not self-made. As much as we would like to be so and say so at moments, we were actually made at conception — not at our personal favorite moment of success. We are in a dangerous position, walking a ledge, when we have created our own reality.

If you trade yourself in for a counterfeit version of yourself, don’t be surprised if you feel like you have lost your very soul in the process. In fact, it’s a very real possibility.

When all the spending, nipping & tucking, and image-projecting is done, we are still human, sitting alone at some juncture, pondering life and eternity, because what we have become as a society is not natural, and our very souls know it. This is not a game. It’s real life. Until we look at the motives of our hearts, we will not be able to change.

Where is this all coming from? What are we doing it all for? What is the motivation? It all starts with the heart. So, what is going on in our hearts? Why do we, as humans, seek this type of attention?

I have a few thoughts on why…

• For validation, to quill insecurities and to feed our egos

• From fomo (fear of missing out) – to receive the invites that make us feel like someone

• For influence, power or leverage — to call the shots in our lives and others, to feel elevated

Yet, too often, instead of looking at the motives of our hearts, we tilt our reasoning — we put a spin on it — to rationalize why our personal fame helps others.

My true question is: What good does one’s fame do for others? How can you, becoming an idol, guard your soul and help the souls of others? I argue that it cannot.

And, here’s why: We are called to make JESUS known, not ourselves known. You becoming an idol is inviting people into idolatry. But the very first commandment in the 10 Commandments says, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3).

As followers of CHRIST, WE should not be the object of other affections, of others worship. It is unholy to put ourselves on a pedestal. The higher we climb in our own will and own strength, the further and harder we will fall. I speak as someone who has been disciplined by my loving Heavenly Father because of my own sinful pride. He cares too much about us to let us walk the ledge. That is why it is so important that we slow down and truly listen for His voice.

Our Heavenly Father loves us — truly loves us — and cares so deeply about our souls. He wants us spiritually well for our eternity. He also wants us to live abundantly here on earth, which includes showing us the way to have healthy relationships. And that starts with being the person He created us to be with our identity rooted in Him, our true source of love.

When we become “famous” for a self-made construct, we are never truly known by others. In fact, we become leveraged for what we can do for others — used, pressured by demands, tracked for favors. Success according to the world actually puts a constant spot light on you that is unhealthy. It is like becoming a consumable product. People want and expect things from us that we cannot give and do not owe them with no good reason.

You may know Andre3000 from the band Outkast. He was once dubbed as one of the 100 most famous and influential people in the world. In an interview, when asked about his notoriety, he said, “Being famous sucks, because it feels unnatural, dehumanizing, and detrimental to mental health, altering how one moves and thinks.” From the outside looking in, millions wished they could have his life, but here he shares about feeling trapped by it.

Ultimately, we are not to be idolized. We are not God. We are incapable of meeting the needs of others. GOD IS THE SOURCE OF ALL FULFILLMENT– not me, not you, not them.

And the Lord knows this. He knows this is not His design. He knows the weight of the pressure that comes with this sin that so easily entraps us, and He wants us to be FREE. He wants us to introduce others to HIM as the source of fulfillment.

We are not God! We need to step back. He also wants each of us to be free, living from a place of Godly peace and love that shows us how to freely and joyfully give, not confined by pressures of this world.

This is why it is imperative that we repent for our selfishness, vanity, and pride (if we have found ourselves in this situation), and that we move out of the childish way of thinking of “What do I want?” to “What does GOD want for my life… and for theirs?” Make HIM known, not make ME known.

We as believers are called to SUBMIT and DELIGHT:

“Submit yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you when the time is come” (1 Peter 5:6).

And, “Delight yourself in the Lord, And He will give you the desires and petitions of your heart” (Psalms 37:4).

When we submit to Him and delight in Him, He begins to heal our hearts, change our hearts, and purify our desires to be in alignment with His will. And, when He has done that healing work — disciplining those He loves (us) — and we humble ourselves, we can become worthy vessels of Him in this world who can leave a lasting, healthy, God-glorifying impact on this earth.

There Is Hope

There is hope for us – for all of us.
The most messed-up of us.
The hurt, the broken, the shamed.
The isolated, lost, & afraid.
The emotionally-decimated of us.

We have wandered.
We have strayed.
We have lost heart and faith.

We have made our own way.
It hasn’t worked.
We know… And it hurts.

We have hidden away, slipped away…
Hidden our hopes, our dreams,
even our sense of dignity.

But we can come out of hiding,
And return to the Lord,
Just as we are –
As messed up, lacking
and sinful as we are.

We must face the facts.
Waste no more precious time.
There is no pulling ourselves up…
No “snapping out of it” that sticks…
No “getting over it” that heals…

We simply can’t do it.
We can’t fix ourselves.
And we can’t fix each other.

But, there is hope.
There is hope for you.
There is hope for us.
There is hope for me.
No matter the situation…
When we come to Him…
When we draw near to God,
To our Father and Creator.

God is our healer.
He is the healer.
Healing begins the moment you return to Him.
No reason to wait, or shave or cleanse.

Come to Him now, right where you are.
Hang up your hurt, and put on hope…
Experience isolation drift away
as His Spirit comforts you.

Give away your broken pieces,
And receive wholeness.
Find your way again… yourself again,
As you were created – in love – to be.

There is hope – for you and for me.

Out-of-Body Experience

For the Pioneers

I have always been pioneering – thinking, seeing, dreaming into the future. Sometimes I can see myself, see my family, in that place… a place of effectiveness on a grand scale, a spiritual standing ground, a place of impact or influence for the kingdom of God and in the marketplace. I can see it.

And in those moments, those gifts of a moment, where the Lord has gifted me with a vision, I sometimes get too excited, to rambunctious, where impatience sets in. I begin to see a gap – from where I am now to where I will be then.

And in that moment, in that gap, when you are at F on the map and God shows you L, it is far to easy to quickly scramble to create a plan to get there… when you see the result but have not yet been given the road map on getting from F to G and then from G to H.

The pioneering person can see the future so clearly at moments that it is as if you are having an out-of-body experience, and you must run to catch up with yourself. It can feel as though you have lost yourself to the future, and you must go on a quest to meet there.

But I have learned (and will probably learn some more) to not set off running to that place, even as beautiful as the vision may be, without first getting the road map from God. For, far too often, I have set off running only to find myself living somewhere in between where I was never intended to reside. God had L for me but I’m living in the land of J, even seemingly trapped, because I lacked the patience and fed the impulsivity to run ahead without getting God’s road map for the journey. And J was only ever meant to be a hotel stay, no place to reside.

And let’s think about those places, those in-between places… Think about the timing of a thing. When you land in a place really matters. For, at a certain time you will encounter different people and different circumstances then you might 20 minutes later… and all of these things matter. God uses people, He uses relationships, He uses circumstances to form us, to shape us, to develop us, to prepare us, even transform us, into the person we saw in the vision.

And the kind of relationships that we want – ones that are healthy, where iron sharpens iron – are found at a certain time in a certain place. Think about it: Meeting someone at 2 pm daylight is different than meeting someone at 2 am in the middle of the night. The people at those times will be different types of people. And what I truly want is to meet my 2 pm relationships, the circumstances with sunlight… I want to only step foot and tread ground where God tells me to and when. And so, I must trust Him for the entire journey.

The difference between who I am now and the person I see in the vision is transformation. And there are no short cuts for transformation. The Holy Spirit is the author and we must yield.

And so, when gifted with a vision, with the beauty of this thing, I must thank God for the vision. And I must temper my impatience to sit where I am until He tells me to go. And then, I must be willing to go at the pace He sets, even if its inching like a turtle rather than stampeding like a rhino.

For visions – grand, holy visions – are not ours. They are Gods. And for those visions to come to pass, we must do things God’s way. And so we must look to Him as the compass. We must stop in our tracks when we are lost and wait for our Father. We must temper the wild abandon that sets us off running, and tell our nervous systems to submit to the will of God and the direction of the Holy Spirit.

For then we will reserve our energy and our focus and our gaze for the things God is focused on and gazing at. And we will see His purposes come to pass in our life, in our lifetime.

Pioneer, Fight the urge to run. You are here… you are now… for a reason. He will show you where to go and when. And when He says, “Go,” do it His way.