Marge Caldwell

It was a long time ago, but here’s what happened. I had been walking with God and serving in my local church. Loving it! I was involved in the single adult group, teaching Sunday School to the junior girls in the senior high group, singing at different churches…just saying Yes to every opportunity God gave me. I didn’t realize it at the time but I was using my gifts and talents within the body of Christ and loving it!

A new guy came into our group who seemed to have a new level of spiritual depth and intellect. While, I tend to take what little Truth I have and run with it, he seemed super thinky…which I interpreted as smarter…and better. In one of our conversations he told me about a passage he had been studying and how it was important to be “sober-minded.” Through the discussion I came to understand that I was too flighty, too lighthearted, not serious enough. As a result, I tried to make changes. I tried to talk less, joke less and laugh less. I tried to approach faith, and life in general, earnestly and solemnly. A few months down this new path, I found that everything had become frivolous…and I was not recognizable. My cheerful demeanor was replaced with grumpiness and eventually, depression.

I was trying so hard to be more spiritual, to be who I thought God wanted me to be. Why was I so sad? Is this what it meant to be sober-minded? This new me wasn’t happy and I was alienating the people around me. I finally came to a point where I couldn’t live that way anymore, so I laid all of this out in a conversation with God. It was then that He reminded me of Marge Caldwell.

Years earlier I had gone to a private Christian school where occasionally she was our chapel speaker. I didn’t know who she was then but she was wonderfully endearing! She would say kooky things like, “Girls, don’t you just love boys! Couldn’t you just eat them up!” We would all laugh. I don’t remember any specifics about her chapel messages. What I do remember is that Marge loved Jesus and she loved people and she pointed people, me, to Jesus. As a young woman, I had questions about faith and doubts about God’s love for me. Who do you think I sought out? Yep, Marge Caldwell.

As I remembered Marge Caldwell, God reminded me of all the ways He had used her in my life to encourage me, to make me love Him more, and to make me love His Word more. And then the thought occurred to me, “If God could use Marge Caldwell, as zany as she is, then he could use me too!”

It happens all the time! We encounter someone who tells us we need to be different than who we are or that we need to do things differently. Or we compare ourselves to others and conclude that we’re not who we should be. You know whose job that is? It’s the Holy Spirit’s. Not ours. God is committed to your transformation far more than you are. And He has the power to complete it.

 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my just decrees. Ezekiel 36:26-27

Young woman,

This is one of my all-time favorite verses. It is God Who does the work of beauty within us. We are the beneficiaries.

Has someone ever used Scripture as ammunition to cut you down? I am sorry. Revel in God. Revel in His Word. Revel in the Truth of this passage and the reality that, if you are His, He is committed to transforming you. Revel in how He wired you and the work of transformation He, and only He, can do in you.

Find out how God wired you and live in it and love it! Maybe we’ll talk about finding your wiring soon!