Crumbs

As promised ladies and gentlemen, my second blog of the day.

Yesterday, I was in a very unusual position. We had a long break during school, so I popped some popcorn, went and sat in my car, and listened to a Perry Noble podcast. It was so good I listened to it again. This time I did my nails. Both times I cried. Imagine being that person walking by my car seeing a girl in sweat pants doing her nails, eating popcorn, and crying. It must have been a very unusual site. So unusual that I'm laughing about it now. Sometimes I am very overemotional and over dramatic.

Anyways, I digress. Like I said, I was listening to a Perry Noble podcast, and this podcast is what I am writing about, because it was excellent, and God showed me some things through it.

Perry Noble has started a new series at his church for women called "Beautiful". Given recent circumstances, Nic and JMob have both recommended that I listen to this particular one about "crumbs". Yesterday I finally had the time. I liked it so much that I listened to it again and typed up notes about it. I thought about just copying and pasting the notes, but this seemed like a bad idea for two reasons:

1. If I gave you all the notes, you wouldn't have any motivation to go and listen it to yourself, and you should, regardless of whether you are a man or a woman or married or single. Go listen to it. Seriously. I'd give you the link but I can't get it to work, so just search Beautiful series by Perry Noble on Google or iTunes.

2. I wrote personal notes and examples in with my notes, and I did not think it would be right to post my true feelings and thoughts about certain people and situations.

Anyways, down to the nitty gritty:

Perry started by explaining that women tend to wrap their identities up in certain things. When their attempts to do this fail, women tend to feel unworthy and unbeautiful. Perry said that most women wrap their identity into these 6 things (a different combination of each for each girl):

1. Appearance
2. Their house
3. Their kids
4. Relationships

Some women define themselves by whether or not they are dating someone because dating someone makes them feel worth something. If you feel this way, then you no longer feel like you are worthy as a woman if he stops pursuing you because your identity is in "him". It should be noted that this is 100% me.

5. Career
6. Religion
Many Christian women identify themselves with what they do and don’t do rather than who Jesus is
I loved this quote: “Many women will lean against the cross and look down their spiritual noses at what others are doing and say, 'hey you need to be more like me', rather then kneeling at the cross and saying, 'hey, there’s room here'.”

Women tend to feel that one day all 6 of these things will be in complete order, and they live for that day, because they think it will be the day that they finally feel good enough. It should be noted that this is also 100% me.

One thing I learned: That day is NEVER coming. If you wait for that day, you will never feel good enough and you will never be the women God intended you to be.

Perry posed 3 Questions that women should ask:

1. Who do I listen to?

Culture is constantly screaming at women that they aren’t good enough, that if they had this body or that house that they will finally be happy and it sends women to a place that God never intended them to go.

What does God say?
Psalm 45:10-Listen oh daughter, consider and give ear, forget your people and your Father’s house.

What's the first word of that verse? Listen! Why? Because God wants you to hear what he thinks of you, not what others think of you.

What if you had a bad dad? What if the father you have as an example of a Heavenly Father wasn't really that great?

God is everything you wish your father would have been and so much more. A father loves his daughter because of who she is and not what she does. How absolutely completely 100% wonderful.

Here comes my favorite part:
Perry told a story about his daughter eating crumbs off the floor after he had finished feeding her. He didn't understand why would she settle for crumbs on the floor when he could bless her with so much more. Perry says God feels the same way about women when it comes to the men we date, or even sometimes marry.

Perry said that God is asking us: "Why are you dating a crumb?"

I wrote this paragraph down word for word from what Perry said. I wish someone had told me this a long long long while. Birth would probably be too early, but maybe around the time when I first understood that there was a difference between boys and girls. I digress again, but here's the paragraph:

"He’s a crumb. The only men that get nervous about that statement are the crumbs. He fell from the table a long time ago and you can do better than that. He is not dedicated to you, he gets what he wants from you, is not willing to commit, step up, or be a man for you. The reason he is dating you is to inflate his incredibly weak male ego. He doesn’t love, respect, value, or treasure you. Women deserve to be treated with respect and admiration, not something to be conquered. Don’t settle for crumbs, God says he has something so much better to bless us with. Don’t wrap your identity up in him."

Wow. Talk about preaching to the choir. Is that the right saying? I'm not sure. What I'm trying to say is, I feel like God wrote that, or I guess had Perry say that a few Sundays ago, specifically for me.

2. What does God think about me?

Sometimes we don’t understand what God thinks about us. We think God hates us because of what we have done. We don’t want to hear that God thinks we are beautiful because of the guilt we feel.

Verse 11-the King is enthralled with your beauty

He is held captive by you, He can’t stop looking at you. God custom designed you and threw away the mold. God is enthralled with your beauty regardless of whether or not your divorced, have kids, have a sexually active past-no matter who finds you beautiful on earth-God finds you beautiful. God is enthralled with Jesus coming out of you, or with the potential you have of Christ in you. You ought to see how God looks at you.

3. Who will I live for?

Who do you admire the most? What quality do you admire most in that person? None of us probably thought about the 6 things that women find their identity in from earlier. Most of us think, their attitude, their patience, their kindness, their ability to forgive.

Why do we work so hard for the things we don’t admire and neglect the things we do admire? Why don’t we work harder to be the woman God wants us to be? Do you work towards being the woman God wants you to be so others can see Christ in you? LIVE FOR HIM! Live for the one that already sees your value, stop wearing yourself out on things that will never make you feel valued and respected. God already views you as beautiful. You do things because God loves you, not to get God to love you.

The last thing Perry talked about went back to the crumb reference. The crumbs are not all that you deserve. A princess is worthy of a prince. A princess does not need to leave her castle and go down to the slumbs to find someone. A princess can stay where she is, and the worthy man will pursue her. Princess needs to wait for a prince.

Perry said that many women are settling for toads, and this part really hit me: "it doesn’t matter how many times you kiss him, he will always be a toad." I have a hard time accepting the fact that there are some things in people that you just can't change and fix. Things only they themselves can change. That's something very difficult for me to accept.

Don’t live for him, you are better than that. Because the King is enthralled with your beauty.

Wow. That's really all I can say. What an incredible message. I don't really care if you read all of it. I mostly put it all down to go over it again. I don't even know if all of it made sense. But I needed to put it down to wrap my mind around it. Maybe I'll read it tomorrow and think its stupid and take it down, but for now it seems like a good idea.

I'm still processing of all it, but thanks Nic and JMob for recommending something that I really needed to hear. I don't know if I have gotten everything out of this message that I am supposed to yet. What I do know is that I will be actively working towards finding my identity solely in God, and not in my appearance or my relationships. I also know that I will no longer be settling for the crumbs of world that don't deserve my time, devotion, or love.

Waiting for my Prince and hoping some of that made sense,
Jenna