It’s so easy to take the Word of God for granted and forget it is a vehicle for a beautiful intimate relationship and finding our identity. In this episode Gina has a conversation with Mickey & Karen Stonier about the power of God’s Word and critical role it plays in our relationship with God.
Mickey & Karen Stonier are authors, speakers and teachers based in San Diego, CA. Mickey is also a pastor at the Rock Church and chaplain for Fire and Police departments in San Diego.
Check out their book Get Out of Control
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Our Identity is Not Our Job Title
Mickey:
I’ve been in ministry for 45 years, and I’ve seen sadly so many people identify their identity by what they do. You can go, “Well, I’m a pastor.” and you lose the intimacy of it being a relationship with a living. What I do – is not who I am. Who I am is God’s son or daughter.
To be freed from the encumbering of having to self protect this image, because God pulls that all away, and just to be real, to be vulnerable, we don’t have a perfect marriage, we don’t have perfect kids, we don’t have perfect anything, but we have a growing relationship.
I love when Jesus turns the water into wine, where the master of the feast says, “You save the best for last.” I personally believe that the older you get, the better it should get. Though my outward man is getting older, the inward person is renewed day by day.
My life verse is Psalm 16:11, “In my presence is fullness of joy, at my right hand are pleasures forever more.” It’s our desire to live in the pleasure of God, to enjoy him, to glorify him. I don’t want to sound religious, but it’s real.
Gina:
It is! So good!
Mickey:
It’s raw and it doesn’t have to be religious or rigid. It’s just every day, it’s an intimate relationship walking with God.
Gina:
When you’re in that place, you’re not having to prove your worth. I teach a prayer class, and when we talk about identity, and the Word, and we talk about your relationship with the Word. It’s so different to read and know about God, than is to know him personally. The analogy I use is, a lot of people can know a lot about my husband.
You can “Google” Norm Stockton, and learn that he’s a bass player. There’s a lot of information about him online. You can find out that he was born in Japan, and when he started playing bass, and just all of this stuff. But I know him, I can anticipate what he’s going to say, I know what he’s going to order at the restaurant we’re at.
I know when he walks in a room, I know what mood he is in.I know if he’s happy, if he’s tired, if he’s feeling sick, because I’ve invested in knowing him, and spent time with him. There’s a difference between spending time in proximity, and actually spending time with.
There is an invitation to be with, and that’s the war between religion and relationship. That was the war between the Pharisee mindset, in the day of Jesus, and what Jesus came to bring. It’s John 17. He was demonstrating what dependence and intimacy look like, and what the Father was and inviting us to have that with Him.
The enemy’s number one tactic is to distort that. As long as he can keep us in that place of doubting that God wants to be in an intimate relationship with us and keeps us in that place of having to prove something or having to work for it or having to hide ourselves. You’re speaking my love language. Then he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
Karen:
Over the years, we’ve got to work with thousands of volunteers and people, you will see their heart for God, but then they get into these roles, or volunteering in certain positions, whether it’s worship or whatever ministry at the church or outside of the church. Because we live in a world where our identity is, “What I do” and “I’m important by what I do.”
It’s so easy for us to fall into a wrong mindset. It is a constant battle in war to fight against that, and go, “No, I’m a child of God, and I’m doing this because I love him, and I love his people.” I’ve seen it over and over again, that the identity becomes “What they do for Jesus,” and then they feel good about their relationship with God, by what they do and not who they are.
Finding Family
Gina:
So my parents weren’t married, and both my parents were alcoholics. My dad was a lounge singer. My mom was a cocktail waitress. It was my mom’s best friend who invited her to church, but she said, no. And then her friend invited me to church. At 12 years old, we walked into the old North Park Theater on a Sunday morning, and John and Lisa Wickham were leading worship.
At 12 years old, I walked in during worship and I was like, “What is this? I don’t know what this is, but I want this.” So that started my journey with Jesus. I had no clue what I was doing, but in 1987, after high school, I came back to Horizon and I started coming regularly. I didn’t feel like I deserved to be there, but I accepted Jesus. I was so grateful.
I started leading worship, and so my identity was fully wrapped up in service. It wasn’t “Oh, I’m great. I can sing.” It was, “This is the little thing I can do. Is this okay? And is this okay? Can I stay now?” It’s like the prodigal son going, can I wash the dishes?
One of the hardest things for me was when I was on the worship team there, and then I got pregnant with Carly and then Lauren. Norm, who was working at the city full time, started traveling with Maranatha Music and doing all sorts of things. Then Roy Cochran and Chris went to another church and God started pulling me out. Norm and I met doing ministry together.
We met serving together, going on the road together, and then suddenly God keeps pushing him that way and pulling me out and with the kids and I was like lost. I had the hardest time with my identity and Jesus just spoke to me and said, “I don’t need your gift. I want you.” It was painful, but so necessary, and so powerful to come back to that.
Mickey:
And most people feel that way.
Gina:
I was a stay at home mom at the end of the day, half the time I was scared. I had to come back to dependence, having to come back to trust, having to come back to fighting the lie. I had to fight the lie of, “Did God really say?”
God is so kind and He’s so loving to bring us to those places, because he loves us too much to leave us in that place of distorted understanding and distorted identity. He loves us too much to allow those strongholds to stay in between us and Him.
Knowing God
Mickey:
Yes, and if you could summarize the Bible, in one word it’s “Jesus”. The covenant of God that He repeats from Exodus to the conclusion of the Bible in Revelation, God says, “I will be your God, you will be my people.” I like to tell people that Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.
I have a relationship with a barista at Starbucks, who knows nothing about me, cares nothing about me, but we have a relationship. She knows my drink. But she doesn’t have an intentional relationship with me. It’s what you’re describing.
The more we’re with God, the closer you become. We have a leadership class at The Rock and we’re looking at this whole identity piece and it’s like an iceberg, 10% is above water – that’s what we do, but 90% is underwater, that’s unseen, and that’s your identity, it’s your core, it’s your character, it’s your integrity.
A lot of emphasis is often on what is seen, what you do, that’s your behavior, but your behavior has to grow from a solid identity and that’s being with God. That’s the “abiding” talked about in John 15.
Karen:
I wanted to touch on something you said that ties in with the identity, and who you are and the battle for all of us, whether you’re on the stage or you’re greeting at a door or you just come to the church — is how do we discover that? How do we get to that place? We have our Bible, we have the church.
So here I am, I know who I am, and I know I’m not good enough, and I know I can’t do enough. And so where is it? How do I get to that place? More of freedom and of accepting love. It was hard for me because I wasn’t loved, I didn’t really have a mom. My dad was a workaholic, and was never around.
So how do I receive the love of God? It’s good that I didn’t have to do anything to be worthy of His love, and I know God does it individually, as we all have different personalities, but the promises of God, as you are again in the Scriptures, discovering who you are, how God made us, what He thinks about us, how much He loves us, how He sent his son.
I see my value then in what God has done, and I can be vulnerable. He sees the worst side of me. He loves me, even with seeing all the dirt in my heart, all my past, and He loves me anyway. It’s a relationship unlike any that you can have with anybody, because only He knows us better than we know ourselves.
Gina:
I love that. When you were sharing your testimony and reading the Bible, you said that you had all of this stuff in your life, but you were just through reading the Bible, and you started to realize the truth. For so many years, the importance of emotional health was left out of the conversation with spirituality, especially post Jesus movement.
Some of that is because in the Jesus movement, a lot of people got miraculously delivered and set free and saved all in one fell swoop – delivered of alcoholism and drug addiction. Old things have passed away, everything’s new, you’re saved.
But what I love about the Bible is that Jesus never heals the same way twice. Sometimes there’s a gradual path to freedom and healing. But people have oftentimes felt like Christianity and emotional wholeness don’t fit together.
But the reality is that Jesus is a very emotionally healthy person. He’s a very emotionally and relationally healthy leader, the way he leads his disciples, his patience with them, his love for them, his ability to pick up an ear and put it back on when it’s looped off in the garden by Peter.
Even in telling Peter “You’re going to deny me,” it was not filled with this shame and accusation, it was preparation for someone he loved, to help him navigate that this is coming. Our ability to receive is probably at the core of so much brokenness in the church.
So many people who are saved have asked Jesus into their hearts, but they haven’t been able to make that journey from there to fully receiving. They want to be the prodigal son, and they want to wash dishes in the kitchen. But the last thing they want to do is sit at the head of the table.
I feel like the prodigal son’s ability to receive that robe in that ring is entirely dependent on his view of the father, and if that’s coming from a place of love or not, and so that’s the dilemma.\
Get Out of Control!
Mickey:
That’s the power of the gospel. The whole book of Romans is the heart of the Bible, it tells the whole gospel story. Paul’s explaining that the law is satisfied in Christ. Like you said, so many believers don’t understand the freedom that they have.
They’re not under the law, not under a judge, but in Christ by grace. When they sin, Christians feel condemnation, they feel shame and they hide because they’re under a law-relationship with the judge, but that is not the gospel. We have a relationship with the Father and Jesus calls us friends.
Mickey:
So when I sin, I’m not condemned, but I’m loved by a Father, and I am encouraged to – acknowledge in the prodigal sense – to return to His loving arms. This is such a powerful perspective to take, but our wounds go so deep that we all self-protect.
Karen started a book and then I joined her. We finished the book, “Get out of control – Finding freedom and letting go.” And it’s on this whole journey of vulnerability and intimacy with the Father.
When we are wounded, our hurts and pains from childhood, our parents upbringing, all the adverse childhood experiences we can have, our brain is wired to self-protect, yet the power of the Spirit is to set us free from all the world, from our flesh and from the devil. When you learn to become totally transparent and vulnerable, it’s a process to grow throughout your life, and there’s such freedom.
Mickey:
When you don’t have to protect yourself to defend your reputation, your identity, and you just own it, then you are totally free. To find the empowerment that God has for all of us, as parents, as husband and wife, as people involved in ministry, to just enjoy the acceptance of the Father.
I don’t ever have to defend myself. I don’t have to create an image if I blow it, I can own it, acknowledge it. I don’t have an image. I try to get out of control. It’s just a great perspective.
Gina:
Oh the irony that the very thing that we think is built for protection, is the thing that’s keeping us from freedom. Those are strongholds.
Father, in Jesus’ name, we come before You, and I thank you for your Presence. And I thank you for Your Word. Father, I pray for every son and every daughter who’s listening right now. Lord, are there areas in our lives where we are intimidated or scared? Do we have baggage? Have we become flippant about your Word?
Lord, show us those things. And Father, I just pray for healing and redemption and restoration. This is an invitation for us to come close, for us to rediscover Your still-small-voice, for us to hear You, for us to see You. Lord have your way, bring healing and restoration. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Check out the rest of the conversation: The Bible Is Speaking
Check out the Dwell Meditations
