From the moment he began preaching, I knew this was God speaking to me. This sermon addressed everything I've been focusing on releasing this week. It reminded me of how essential it is to our living that we forgive, Let go, and release everything is a guy so that we can be made whole.
Over four years ago, God put a word in my spirit for forgiveness. I've been trying to write about it for years but God keeps making me start over. It wasn't that I didn't learn that lesson, it was just that in certain situations it needed to be fine-tuned. But today He put all of the pieces together that He showed me over the years.
If this is your first time reading my blog, you wouldn't know anything about me. But for my regular readers, you know that I had a difficult childhood. From being accused of things I didn't do, a lack of affection, thinking that love has to be up-and-down or bipolar, discouragement and a lack of encouragement, being compared to other people, and being molested, these things shaped how I saw myself. I saw myself as a victim. A lot of times I was reaching out to people for help but I wasn't even sure of what I actually needed. I made sure to go away to college to run away from the horrible life I felt I had. Going away to college was freedom for me. But my problems followed me there. They stalked me in the late night hours and taunted me in my dreams. So much that I would cry out at night to God that He would heal my family and to heal me, to use me to help heal them. It was one of those nights during my freshmen year of college that God spoke "preach" to me.
Since that time I have been devoted to healing so that God can get the full use from my life. And it's been in the last almost 30 days of being 30 that God did the ultimate, including this morning. For 21 days after my birthday, I fasted and did a video sharing a new daily secret that came about as a result of my molestation. It was in that time that God fully healed me from being molested. Today the sermon said you know you have been healed from something when you can do something you never did...I used to not be able to talk about being molested without crying. Some of those things I never admitted to anyone. But it was today that God sealed it for me.
Listening to that sermon made me recount so many things. I specifically remembered a sermon at my church in New Orleans from a visiting pastor, Do You Want To Be Made Whole. This came about after I had watched a movie with a guy that simulated the effects of our prison system on "test subjects." One part of it bothered me so greatly, a weaker inmate almost being raped by a sexual deviant guard, that I went home and prayed to God why did that situation and situations where people were being victimized bothered me so much. He revealed then that I wasn't totally healed and I needed to be made whole and He gave it to me that same Sunday.
The sermon I watched/listened to this morning touched on everything...from how the pains we experience take root deep within us and grow deeper the longer we don't uproot them to how it merely takes a seed (mustard seed faith in the word seed of God) to uproot a tree. I was doing the ugly cry because I know so many who needed that word and the reminder. I needed God to complete His finished work in me and He did it.
What's funny is that I've been taking a course to open myself up to receive love, particularly the love of my God-appointed husband but love however God wants to give it. I've been able to address so many things through it and I'm so grateful! God had greater plans than that for me though. God poured out love as only He can. God became my husband in this season and I became the bride of Christ...He cleansed me from that shame and bitterness, took it all away to make me new for His use. But He reminded of a prayer I prayed, to be healed so I don't project my pain on my husband and children, and break the cycle. And He did just that for me!!!
In this process, I have truly come to understand what it means to love. In the confession I wrote, I affirm 1 Corinthians 13:4-8, specifically Love keeps no record of wrongs. As I sat in the car crying, while driving LOL, it seemed like everything around me was moving slow. It's as if God slowed down time so that I could fully accept what He had just done in me. Literally every single word He spoke to me was said in that sermon. Time to release. Revival. Renewal. Forgiveness. Freedom.
I had so many epiphanies, so many lightbulbs going off, so many puzzle pieces falling into place. And I realized, that I have the responsibility of being like Harriet Tubman in this season. Because I've been freed, it's my responsibility to bring freedom to other people. It's selfish of me to keep what God did for me to myself. So all of this is to tell you that whatever it is you haven't forgiven, or released, or been healed from, it's time to let it go. It's time to stop projecting your pain on to other people. It's time to stop being hurt and hurting other people blindly. Isaiah 61 is a chapter in that I know is my specific call. Just as Jesus read these verses allowed in the temple, I hear verses 1-7 over and over repeatedly in my head, especially verses 1 and 6. 61:6 or 616. 616 is my hospital room number from when I had my kidney transplant. It was literally the place where God gave me a second chance at life. I made a promise to God that I would do whatever He wanted me to do with my life. And this year, my one word is live. But how can you truly live knowing that those you love and the people you meet aren't really living? That they're still in bondage? That they are still shackled and not free?
I know this was long and had a lot in it. But I want you to know that God truly loves you. He's concerned about everything single thing that concerns you. He wants you to be whole. Just like the man at the pool of Bethesda in John 5, He wants you to be made whole. He wants you to fully live.
Today, I hope you stop seeing your pain in every situation and instead see it as an opportunity to get free. Turn it all over to God and let him heal you. Whatever your process may be, God is faithful to see you to the end.
"I shall not die but live, and shall declare the works and recount the illustrious acts of the Lord."
Psalm 118:17 AMP
"And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you."
Philippians 1:6 AMP
--
Sent from Gmail Mobile
No comments:
Post a Comment