Key Truths for Living Life - Small Logo

about Deborah

Home
Key truths column
Perspective column
Bloggin'
About Deborah
About Women
Getaway with God
Praying for God
Resources
Contact
To get to know Deborah better, visit her blogs and browse her columns:

You Get Your Life Back: confessions, quotes & comments: Interactive BLOG exploring key truths for living life. Excerpts from key truths articles, thought-provoking quotes, musings comments, links.

PERSPECTIVE blog: Archives of recent Perspective columns.

KEY TRUTHS e-column archives.

Horizontal Divider

Lookin' Good

Lately, several people have told me, "You look so good!" What an incredible testimony to God's love and power! What an affirmation that he is making known to me the path of life, especially since walking that path has taken me through a season so difficult I thought I might die — and did experience a type of death. Praise God for this resurrection season!

Most of my life, I've truly known Jesus Christ and truly desired to honor him. Growing up in a genuinely Christian home, becoming a Christian at age 8, actively participating in church, eagerly studying the Bible, marrying a Christian man, rearing our two daughters to know and follow God, living out God's call to write and speak what he was teaching me — I experienced blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace.

At the same time, other loyalties competed with my loyalty to Christ. Incredibly, I did not recognize these as rival loyalties. I did not see the subtle, yet dramatic, difference between loyalty to things connected with Christ and loyalty to Christ himself. Genuinely loving Christ, I prayed to honor him. Fooled by the counterfeit, I could not see where religious-looking but wrong motives, attitudes and patterns intermingled with godly ones.

Even so, God loved me and acted to answer my prayer. Beginning in 1998, he took me where I didn't want to go to reveal what I desperately needed to see. For more than a decade, he has gone to great lengths to show me himself, myself and us.

Now, like Isaiah, Ezekiel and Mary Magdalene, I stand, utterly astonished, saying, "I have seen the Lord!" As never before, I have seen his radiance, his power, his compassion, his indignation, his faithfulness, his fullness, his suffering, his resurrection, his mystery, his love.

I've seen myself, too. What a sobering picture! And yet, what a beautiful one! All those years, I settled for much, much less than what Jesus had purchased. All those years, I looked at myself through a distorted mirror, a lens that simultaneously puffed me up and put me down. I kept trying to please a counterfeit christ — promising me everything, but always holding it just out of reach; propelling me into activity, rather than drawing me into rest; calling for pivotal involvement in God's purposes, yet relegating to the periphery all but a chosen few.

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Today, as never before, I "with unveiled face" am "beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord" and "being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:17-18 NASU). Whoopee! I'm looking good!

Speaking of sobering — and beautiful — pictures, I've also seen us. God has showed me, up close and personal, the state of his church and the inner workings of the Western "church culture" we all too often believe to be the same thing. It's epidemic, this confusing of loyalty to things connected with Christ with genuine loyalty to Christ. It's epidemic, this business of settling for much, much less than what Jesus has purchased. Living on the resurrection side of history, we're demonstrating little of the authority, power, love and life that characterized the church in Acts — while telling ourselves this is the best we can hope for, this side of heaven.

We can list many good things we're experiencing and doing, blessing upon blessing, grace upon grace. Yet, all too often we're like people trying to function inside a network of plexiglass prisons. Being invisible, these prisons may appear to provide freedom, purpose and community. Being prisons, they keep us isolated, irrelevant and bound.

Great news! Jesus Christ loves us. He is committed to freeing us even from prisons we do not see. He has promised to transform all his people from every nation into "a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish" (Ephesians 5:27 NIV). We will look good!

In obedience to God, I'm telling what I've seen — of him, of myself, of us. You see, bringing to light what has been hidden is like pointing prisoners to keys hanging in clear view. It makes a way for everyone who will to step into freedom and to leap, sing and dance along the path of life.

 
 
Deborah Brunt speaks out
about living life,
not as a religious Christian,
but as a friend of God.

Horizontal Divider

Just the facts

Author of four books and contributor to six others. 

More than 1,500 published articles.

PERSPECTIVE column, has appeared in newspapers and online since 1990.

KEY TRUTHS e-column, published online since 2006.

Has spoken and presented dramatic monologues across the U.S. and internationally.

When speaking, explores key truths for living life, not as a religious Christian, but as a friend of God.

Guides interactive prayer, worship and spiritual warfare experiences.

Most recent book, Focused Living in a Frazzled World: 105 Snapshots of Life, also available as audio book.

Two teaching series available on DVD, videotape and CD: Key Truths for Leading Well and a study of Esther called Key Truths for Kingdom Living.

Holds Doctor of Practical Ministry from Wagner Leadership Institute.

Enjoys reading, music, fast walking, mountains, and gourmet coffee.

Lives in Olive Branch, Mississippi.

Loves her husband Jerry, her two grown daughters and her son-in-law.

Laughs a lot at her two cats, Tessa and Pewter.

Horizontal Divider

 

Find out more about inviting Deborah to speak. Consider hosting or participating in a Getaway with God.

Key Truths for Living Life - Small Logo
key truths Open Gates LLC ∞ 6515 Goodman Road PMB 326 ∞ Olive Branch, MS 38654
key truths for living life, not as a religious Christian, but as a friend of God

(c) 2006-2010 key truths Open Gates LLC. All rights reserved.

 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations on this website are taken from The Holy Bible, Today's New International VersionTM TNIV2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ®, copyright ©®. All rights reserved worldwide.

Powered by Register.com