Rebecca Black is a writer, teacher, and author from Perth, Western Australia, whose work centers on identity, sonship, and the transforming power of the Father's love. Rooted in the finished work of Christ and shaped by a deep conviction that freedom and healing unfold through rest and revealed truth rather than striving and performance, Rebecca's message is that Jesus came to bring us home to that love, and that everything flows from learning to receive it, abide in it, and be held in it. Through HFD Ministries and the Restored to Glory discipleship series, she walks people into a deeper awareness of who they are in Christ, helping them shed fear-based lenses and live as beloved sons and daughters, anchored in love and established in the life of Christ.

Website: www.holyfiredisciples.com

Linktr.ee: @‌rebecca.kylie.b

Welcome to 12-Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, His creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Rebecca.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

I'm in Perth, Australia.

How's life in Perth, Australia?

It's great.

I love Perth.

It's not where I was born, so the Lord moved me over here, and yeah, it's just a beautiful place.

Coastal, amazing beaches.

It feels like we're at a resort at home.

Have you ever been out of Australia?

I lived in Solomon Islands for a couple of years, and I've travelled to America and New Zealand, but not a great deal of travel.

I hope to do that more often in the future.

I think getting all the way east, all the way west is huge though, right, in terms of travel.

Which would you prefer though?

It is a big country.

Most people don't realize how big it is.

I love the west coast because it's a lot more relaxed.

The east coast has the hustle.

It has a lot more of the population, but it's a lot more chill over here.

How did you come to meet Jesus?

I was really blessed with my grandmother.

She was the first generation Christian, and she was the first one to come to faith.

Growing up with her, just living her faith, and she cleaned the church as well and helped in the kitchen, so she was always there in the prayer meetings.

We just happened to hang out a lot with her when she was in the church.

She just was authentic in the way that she walked with the Lord.

Was there a time that you weren't authentic with God?

Well, definitely.

I came to the Lord when I was quite young, about seven, but I think the battle we all face is this place of a head knowledge of God and then actually allowing a heart transformation for God.

I know that there was a season of my life, probably in my teen years, where I knew the Lord, but I hadn't yet learned what surrender meant.

There was definitely a time of coming back to Him to allow Him to really go deeper in me.

In the Caribbean, one of my experiences is that when someone comes to Christ, they forget that they, too, were just like many other people that aren't serving Christ.

For some reason, there's a level of judgment that comes with being a Christian naturally, and it's something that even myself, I have to remind myself, hey, you were just like that.

God transformed you.

It's possible for them to be transformed, and there must be that level of patience.

Do you have that experience as well?

It is such a brilliant topic to bring up because I think every single person has this level of judgment that they sit in.

It's not just for other people.

The church does tend to have this holier-than-thou attitude towards unbelievers, which is so against what Jesus lived.

Yes, there's this tendency to believe that we are so much better because we know the Lord, as opposed to the fact that, no, we're all walking on a journey of faith to coming to know the Lord in a new way.

We sit in this place of judgment, and one of the things that the Lord has really shown me is that this judgment framework that we build ourselves on, it doesn't just bring judgment on other people.

It brings a heavier judgment on ourselves, which is why we're judging other people, because we're judging them based on the scales of the law, as opposed to the embrace of grace and love.

We are judging them based on, well, I need to look better, so I'm going to judge them worse, as opposed to the scales of the embrace of grace.

There's no comparison.

The only way to truly come out of that judgment mentality, though, is to truly understand and be able to receive the love of the Father.

Yeah, tell me about that.

How do you receive the love of the Father?

I think the biggest thing, people, to be able to come and to get to know the Father as loving, is to truly understand that there is absolutely nothing that we can do to add to what Jesus has already done.

When we truly understand that His love is so deep and so all-encompassing, that in 2 Corinthians, the word says that God was on the cross reconciling the world to Himself, not counting our sins against us.

So the reality is that God doesn't count our sins against us.

We count our sins against ourselves.

So we spend our whole life trying to hide who we are in this place of fear.

The Lord has just been pursuing us throughout all of time, pursuing us to go, no, there's no distance between you and me.

I'm not holding you in a place of judgment.

I want you to see what I've already finished, to make a way for you to receive what I have for you, because the Lord never held us at a distance.

We did.

We created that distance in that place of hiding, that place of judging ourselves not worthy of His love.

And so to come to know Him, we come to that place of realizing that there is nothing we can do apart from what He has done.

And then in that place of humility, in that place of really seeing who we are and who He is, He is then able to reveal His heart and His love for us and reveal how He actually sees us, who we truly are as sons and daughters of the most holy God.

As you're speaking, the thing that pops into my mind is the power of discipleship, truly the power of discipleship in that one of the most powerful things Jesus did on His walk on this earth, it was or is or has been to develop a relationship with His disciples.

And as a result, we saw the grace, we saw the love, but then they showed the love, they showed the grace.

And the reason I connected those dots, it's because who else but a friend could convince you that the love that Jesus has for you is true?

What do you think about that?

I think, yeah, that's such a great thing because in ministry, what I actually do with people is I facilitate encounters with the Lord so that they're actually held in this place.

They're going, no, no, you are actually safe here, even when you're feeling this fear come up, even when you're feeling all this heaviness and burden that you're not good enough to be in this place, sitting with the Lord, that I'm able to go, no, no, it's okay to feel that fear.

It's okay to know that I'm creating a safe place for you so that you can come into those difficult places with the Lord.

And being in the body is such a gift.

And I think that the greatest struggle we have as brothers and sisters in Christ is we're still yet, the struggle is we haven't received the love because we can't love our brothers and sisters properly without first receiving what God has given, which brings me to that shift of the kingdom.

Because it's laid out all the way through Matthew, but more specifically in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, where Jesus is talking about how the kingdom is almost here, which is part of him bringing the fulfillment of his purpose.

But the Beatitudes talks about and lays out the way and the principles of living in the kingdom.

And this is part of the whole being set apart and in the world, but not of the world, because we're living from a different framework.

The world teaches us that we need to sow in order to reap.

But the kingdom speaks about how we need to receive in order so that we can give.

So that's why the Lord loved us first, because we have to receive that and for ourselves, again, in that place of brokenness to know that we are worthy of being loved.

And all that fear that comes up that causes division and causes chaos and causes pain for other people in that place of brother and sister in the body of Christ relationship.

But when we learn to receive his love, receive his grace and mercy and forgiveness, all those things then flow out of us without actually any effort.

You are where you are today as a result of the good and the bad, the pain, and again, getting from the pain who you are today.

Why choose to help other people?

Well, again, I guess it goes back to that whole thing, like the depth that you're able to receive first from the Lord.

You can't help but have it flow out of you.

I mean, I've been very, very blessed by the Lord to have incredible healing from him.

I grew up in an incredibly toxic and oppressive environment.

I'm not sure if you've ever heard of satanic ritual abuse.

That was my childhood.

And the Lord brought me into so much fullness and restoration by allowing him to go into those truly dark places in my life.

And it was hard.

It was incredibly hard, but I would do it again, that healing part with him, because just of the depth of his love and grace, like even getting emotional, even just reflecting on that because of the way he has walked with me so faithfully to know him and how he continues to reveal more of himself and just how good he is and being able to offer that same help to others.

It just blesses me because I'm able to bring them to the Father and show them just how good he is and how much he truly loves them.

In closing, is there anything else you'd like to share?

The biggest thing for me to be able to share for anybody is just to know that it doesn't matter where you are.

It doesn't matter what you've done.

Truly, it doesn't matter.

It's irrelevant.

Because the Word says that there is nowhere you can go that the love of the Father cannot find you.

And that includes, you know, in Psalm 139, it talks about even if you're in the deepest, darkest pit of hell, he can find you there.

So it doesn't matter what you've done.

He will never, ever, ever turn you away.

All you need to do is just call on his name and he will come to you.

He will reveal himself to you.

That's all that's required.

Rebecca Black, thank you for being on What Is Inspired by 12 Minute Craft Wars.