Faith Is Now, Not Nostalgia

When Church Was My Identity, but Relationship Became My Faith…

There was a time in my life when I thought I knew exactly who I was.

I was young, passionate about God, deeply involved in ministry, and eventually became a worship leader. I spent years surrounded by people who loved God, served God, and lived for ministry.

My faith was not something I kept to myself.

It was my life.

Because church, ministry, worship, and serving God were such a significant part of my life, I naturally connected those things with being close to God. I thought my proximity to church and my involvement in ministry were evidence of my proximity to God.

And in many ways, they were expressions of my faith.

But I am learning that expressions of faith and relationship with God are not always the same thing.

Life changed.

Divorce changed me.

Ministry changed.

My understanding of people changed.

And for a while, my understanding of God changed too.

The hardest part wasn’t simply losing my marriage. It was discovering that someone I trusted spiritually was not who I believed he was.

I had trusted him as my husband, but I had also trusted him as a spiritual leader. His community choir was part of what led me to Christ, so when his life began to contradict everything I thought he represented, it created a crisis in me that went much deeper than marriage.

I began questioning things I never thought I would question.

There was even a moment when I stood on a stage struggling with my belief in God because of what was happening in my marriage, even though the full truth had not yet been revealed.

I remember thinking, God, if I trusted this person because I believed You placed him in my life, then what does this mean about You?

Eventually, the truth came to light.

The things I had questioned were real.

The things I had been told I was imagining were real.

The questions I had been made to feel insecure for asking had answers.

And the revelation was painful.

But today, I see something I couldn’t see then:

Someone else’s deception does not have to become my definition of God.

I had confused the person who represented God to me with God Himself.

And when that person failed me, I thought God had failed me too.

But God was not the one who betrayed me.

God was the One who had to walk me through what came after.

That distinction has changed the way I understand faith.

For years, I thought being close to God looked like being in church, serving, leading worship, knowing Scripture, participating in ministry, and doing the things I had always done.

None of those things were wrong.

But I am learning that you can do all the right things and still miss the heart of relationship.

Because worship isn’t just an act.

Worship is a lifestyle.

It is what happens when someone hurts you and you choose not to become cruel.

It is what happens when you feel disrespected and choose to respond with honor.

It is what happens when you have every reason to retaliate but choose obedience instead.

It is what happens when nobody is watching.

It is what happens when doing the right thing doesn’t make you feel like you won.

Sometimes you will walk away from obedience feeling empty.

You may feel played.

You may feel misunderstood.

You may even wonder why you bothered doing the right thing when the other person seemingly got away with doing the wrong thing.

But God sees your heart.

He knows when you chose differently because you love Him.

And I think that matters far more than what people see.

We can appear to be some of the most spiritual people on earth and still not know how to treat people.

We can know how to perform for God without knowing how to surrender to God.

Because obedience is not performance.

We can perform and do all the things that look spiritual, yet still struggle when God asks us to surrender the very thing we don’t want to release.

But when you truly love someone, you become more consumed with their love than with the thing you’re struggling to let go of.

Love knows how to let go.

Love knows how to trust.

Love knows how to be content.

That is love.

That is relationship.

That is worship.

That is God.

And I think this is where my faith is changing.

I spent years learning how to worship God in a church.

Now I’m learning how to worship Him with my life.

That’s different.

Because relationship will test how you live.

Do I show up differently because I know Him?

Do I respond differently?

Do I love differently?

Do I forgive differently?

Do I handle disappointment differently?

Do I surrender differently?

These are the questions that are confronting me now.

Not whether I can perform faith, but whether I can live it.

I have spent years learning how to rebuild my life. I went from being deeply involved in ministry to navigating the real world after divorce. I had to learn how to work, parent, build, make decisions, provide, and become a woman outside of the identity I had known for so long.

And somewhere along the way, I began wondering if the gifts I once carried were still there.

Maybe you have done that too.

Maybe life happened to you and you began questioning whether the person you used to be was still inside of you.

Maybe you used to pray differently.

Maybe you used to worship differently.

Maybe you used to dream.

Maybe you knew your purpose.

And then life happened.

A divorce.

A betrayal.

A disappointment.

A career.

Motherhood.

Bills.

Responsibilities.

Survival.

And suddenly, the things that once made you feel spiritually alive became distant.

That has been part of my struggle.

Work can be demanding. Life can be demanding. Sometimes I feel like Martha, busy doing everything that needs to be done while longing to sit at Jesus’ feet like Mary.

But I have realized something.

I haven’t lost my Mary heart.

I still have those moments.

When the noise settles, when I have room to breathe, I find myself wanting God. I still want to hear Him. I still want to understand Him. I still want to know what He has placed inside of me.

Maybe the problem isn’t that my hunger disappeared.

Maybe life simply became loud.

And now I’m learning how to make room for God again.

But I’m also learning not to romanticize who I used to be.

Because faith is not nostalgia.

I cannot spend the rest of my life trying to become the woman I was before everything changed.

I have to trust God as the woman I am now.

The woman who has survived things she never thought she would have to survive.

The woman who has learned that being close to someone spiritual doesn’t automatically mean that person is spiritually healthy.

The woman who has learned that discernment matters.

The woman who has learned that gifts must be submitted to God.

The woman who has learned that talent and gifting are not the same thing.

I can develop my talent.

I can work hard.

I can teach.

I can write.

I can speak.

I can build.

I can create.

I can use what God has naturally placed inside of me to make a living and make other people better.

But my spiritual gifts belong to God.

They aren’t my hustle.

They aren’t my identity.

They aren’t something I use to prove myself.

They are something I submit.

And maybe that is what God is restoring in me.

Not just ministry.

Not just a platform.

Not just a title.

Relationship.

God isn’t simply asking me to seek His hand.

He is teaching me to seek His face.

Because when my relationship with God is transactional, disappointment can shake everything.

But when I know Him intimately, I can lose something without losing Him.

I can be disappointed without abandoning Him.

I can be hurt without believing He is the one who hurt me.

I can walk through uncertainty and still trust Him.

That is a different kind of faith.

Not the faith of a young woman who believed because everything around her made sense.

But the faith of a woman who has lived long enough to know that sometimes things don’t make sense, and God is still God.

So I’m learning to pay attention to my posture.

My heart posture: Am I seeking God’s face or only His hand?

My mind posture: What thoughts am I choosing to agree with? Am I allowing my past to tell me what God is like, or am I allowing His Word to tell me who He is?

My life posture: What am I actually doing with what I say I believe?

Because faith isn’t just what I say.

It’s how I show up.

After everything I’ve heard this week from my church, through messages from several preachers, including Pastor Mike Jr., and everything I’ve experienced personally, I’m realizing that what God wants from me is submission.

So much of what I’m reflecting on came from Pastor Mike Jr.’s message about faith, and it challenged me to look beyond what I do for God and examine how I’m actually living for Him.

I cannot be so focused on the results that I miss the relationship.

I cannot become so consumed with what God is going to do that I miss what God is doing in me.

Maybe the goal was never to reach the highest place.

Maybe the goal was always to get low enough to surrender.

There is a song that says, “If the highest place I reach is at His feet, then I’ve done it all.”

And today, I understand that differently.

I don’t need to prove how spiritual I am.

I don’t need to perform my faith.

I don’t need to recreate a former version of myself.

I simply need to surrender.

A year ago, my dad’s life was suddenly taken, and that bothered me. I didn’t understand it, and honestly, there are still things I don’t understand.

But as I reflect on everything God has been showing me lately, perhaps his life and the message he left with me are simply another reminder:

To live is Christ, but to die is gain.

Not because this reflection is about my dad.

But because his life reminds me that ultimately, this life belongs to God.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest definitions of worship:

Not simply what I do for God,

but how completely I am willing to live for Him.

So I’m no longer trying to get back to who I was.

I’m learning to become who God is calling me to be now.

A woman who can recognize her talents and develop them.

A woman who can recognize her gifts and submit them.

A woman who can work without worshiping her work.

A woman who can serve without needing a title.

A woman who can love people without making them God.

A woman who can trust God again without pretending she was never hurt.

A woman who can surrender the outcome without surrendering her faith.

And maybe that’s the word for someone else who has been struggling too:

You may not have lost your faith.

You may be learning a different kind of faith.

You don’t have to go backward to find God.

You don’t have to become who you were before the divorce, before the betrayal, before the disappointment, before the years passed.

Meet God here.

In this version of you.

With this life.

With these scars.

With these questions.

With these gifts.

With this story.

Because faith is not remembering who you used to be.

Faith is believing God is still present in who you are becoming.

And I’m choosing to believe that my best relationship with God isn’t behind me.

It’s happening now.