An Experience of Extreme Worship

It is good that I didn't make a New Year’s resolution to blog frequently. I would have failed miserably! My resolution was to live in integrity, so I have to tell you the truth! No excuses. It has been a few months since I blogged, and I want to update you on what has been happening. It has been a season of transformations! I finished the endless rounds of editing my book, Broken! To Golden: Transform Your Troubles into Treasures! Your Struggles into Joy! Between proofing ad nauseam, and spending many nights up sorting through the technical difficulties inherent in publishing, I learned more than I ever cared to know about word processing, setting margins, fixing fonts, formatting, avoiding orphans, and a myriad of other minute details. Who knew? The technical, glitchy part was by far the harder part of the journey! 


Writing the book was a magnificent love-affair, an experience of extreme worship. It brought me closer to God as I felt His inspiration leading me on every page, in every example. I felt like I was in a rich and wonderful conversation with God through the entire writing! He breathed scriptures for me to use in the chapters, gave me word pictures, parables, and stories to amplify the messages. I loved the journey, because I felt the nearness of His presence every step of the way. It felt intimate and loving. I felt guided, and protected through the storms…yet all the while it was very challenging. I wanted to be sure I heard His voice, got it “right,” did a job worthy of Him. I had friends, and two editors, who primarily praised the book, making only a few suggestions! I was so amazed and blessed. I guess I heard Him!


Even now, I am listening to Broken for You, a haunting love song to God, on the Undone CD by Brian and Jenn Johnson (2012). It feels like the perfect soundtrack for me. I first embarked on this book journey 25 years ago. It was launched from a dream I remembered vividly upon awakening, and that set the stage for an epic journey out of psychological and spiritual death; through wildernesses, triumphs, failures, miseries, and joy. The theme of extreme brokenness into glorious wholeness pervades the message. The song, Broken For You, speaks from the Song of Songs (in the Old Testament), a passionate and poetic book which is also a foundational theme in my book. Broken! To Golden: Transform Your Troubles into Treasures! Your Struggles into Joy! speaks to the passion of our journey from utter fallenness, falseness, despair, and spiritual death~to God’s magnificent, loving, passionate and fiery redemption. He frees us from bondage, devastation, destruction and dysfunction. God’s love~His uncompromising, unadulterated, glorious passion to win us back into love, into relationship, and into eternal life~ is my theme, and my life.


So, the book is finally in print! My all-nighters were so I could take copies to a conference I am teaching May 1st and 2nd for Ambassador Church in Brea. I have the honor of being the guest speaker for their women’s retreat in La Quinta. They are a beautiful, multi-ethnic church, and have a passion to live and love in Christ’s Image. Their Senior Pastor, Ray Chang, has an inspiring life verse: 


Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us…(Ephesians 3:20, ESV).


I will let you know how the conference goes. And if you want a copy of Broken! To Golden: Transform Your Troubles into Treasures! Your Struggles into Joy! just contact me. It will soon also be available on Amazon.

© Laurel Basbas 2014