15 Year Celebration Reflection: Carli Weber
The inside is so much more important than the outside
In November of 2022, Midtown Baptist Temple turned 15 years old. At this time I had been serving faithfully for the last five years. I had gotten saved five years earlier in August and hadn’t turned back since. My whole life was flipped upside down and I dove head first into discipleship, and soon after, ministry. After laboring for so long in a local church, God has blessed me with many opportunities to learn how to lead and stretch my capacity. He has spent countless hours trying to teach me how to not be the self-sufficient person that I am, but to lean on Him in dependency. This is not always how I live my life, but I know it will take me the rest of my life to learn. I was in a season of self-sufficiency when our 15 year birthday came upon us, and I could not be more excited to hear that we were taking a pause on the movement of ministry to sit still.
“It was for us to take a moment and make sure we were not turning into machines”
In announcing this, our senior pastor Sam Miles was very clear with his intentions. It was for us to take a moment and make sure we were not turning into machines. It truly took me a few weeks to understand that this was a possibility. That was because I had adopted a machine mindset. How could a well oiled machine truly stop? I asked question after question: “So we won’t do any bible study during this time? What about hangouts? What about discipleship?” I got more and more excited for this time and took every chance I got to warn the people I lead not to take advantage of it or waste their time. I’m not sure if this is true or not, but I became convinced that this was a blessing I might never see again in my whole life. I took it seriously.
What I wanted from this was pretty simple. I wanted to sit at the Lord's feet, worship Him, and grow in my endurance in the Word (Psalm 57:7-11). The Lord prepared my heart in such a sweet way for this time. In the Postscript (episode 19) the Lord showed me a theme of what these next few weeks would be about. In the episode, Mark Trotter talks about his life and how he grew in different churches under different men. There were men who told him to cut his long hair in legalism, men cheating on their wives, men giving monetary incentives, and many other types. I found myself in awe of how God could use such circumstances to grow such a mighty man of God. But I was in greater awe when I heard the profound truth that the Lord showed Mark through these years of his life. The inside is so much more important than the outside.
“I didn’t realize how much I had been rushing my prayer life”
So now with the empowerment of a truth that I will never forget, I went into the two weeks of rest. My prayer life was the first big thing I noticed. I was able to see how God had answered so many prayers throughout my life, even prayers that I hadn’t been faithful to pray. I didn’t realize how much I had been rushing my prayer life. My time was mostly spent in Matthew, and the many things I gleaned are far too great for this blog post. But the focus of everything that I had learned was based on my intentions, that which is on the inside.
Matt 13:45-46 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: 46 Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.
These verses grabbed me by the heart and shook me up a little. They have become some of my favorite verses. This refers to salvation. The ONE pearl of a great price that grants no other response other than selling everything you have to attain it. As someone who has already accepted the free gift of salvation, this call is now to one of remembrance and sanctification. My heart had forgotten how great of a weight this was in my life, and therefore left the heart attitude of laying everything I have on the altar, including myself.
“…it wasn’t the things I was involved with that was keeping me from rest, but my own wrong intentions and desires”
Obviously our greatest example of someone with the most pure intentions is the Lord Jesus Christ. In Matthew 14:13-23 we see a great ministry principle that I needed to glean. You see Jesus seeking to be alone. I desire this same thing so often and feel like I never get it. The same thing happened to Jesus. He got bombarded by the work of the ministry, and not just people seeking to waste his time, but people with broken hearts and situations that needed sustenance. He quickly adjusted his timeline to the Father’s and ministered with a compassionate heart. The greatest thing of this miracle, though, is the fact that he still went up to be alone after the day. He was probably so exhausted and drained. Many times when ministry does this to me, I use it as an excuse to not go up and be alone with the Lord, but in reality I need to trust him for the strength to be able to still sit at his feet after a long and tiring day.
Matt 23:25-26 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. 26 [Thou] blind Pharisee, cleanse first that [which is] within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
If these verses remind you of Mark's podcast mentioned previously then I would say we have similar brains. I was shocked by how in tune these verses were with that podcast. By this point the time of rest was almost done, and I had yet to stop thinking about that episode. I was so convicted about how different my insides felt than what I knew my outside looked like. God was good enough to remind me that he could see that, even if no one else could.
I will admit this wasn’t the easiest time for me. I thought while finally having the time to use as I pleased I would do nothing but spiritual things. But the temptation to entertain myself or fall into a slumber for the two weeks was definitely there. I realized very quickly that it wasn’t the things I was involved with that was keeping me from rest, but my own wrong intentions and desires. There also were a lot of hard things that the Lord said to me, as you guys have all read by now. I had been shown that I needed to relearn many habits, thought processes, priorities, ministry strategies, and to really focus on the inside. I need to be full of the light like Matthew 6:22 talks about. This time was a gift and I am so thankful for the timing of it in my life as well as the clear conviction it gave me.
Carli Weber is a member of Midtown Baptist Temple and is a part of C&YA. She is a part of the C&YA hospitality ministry and leads a UMKC women’s Bible study.
