The Journey

I love the journey that the Lord has me on, even in times of pain or what seems like darkness.

I could not always say that. In the past I have kicked and screamed inside to be past whatever circumstance I was going through. I am finally starting to embrace the sacredness of the present moment, learning that when you are feeling the Spirit move in you, and pain or woundedness is stirred up, it is not something to rush past. As Terry Wardle says in his book Draw Close To The Fire, when discussing a family going through a horrible tragedy, “If by God’s grace I can help them embrace this awful pain — instead of running , lashing out or denying it — I believe it will transform their lives. God is in the darkness, weeping with them, longing to love, comfort and heal their deep wound. Their only hope for wholeness, as harsh as it sounds, lies within the suffering, for there they will find God ready to pour out His love and strength.” And I know this to be true for me as well.

So, here I sit at a laptop. Ready to pour out my heart for the Lord and see what He does.

I read something today that triggered something deep inside me. It brought memories back to me of one of the darkest times in my life. I have experienced a lot of pain and trauma through the years just by living in this broken world, and one of the toughest times in my life was just a few years ago when I reached a pressure point in my faith where many lies that I was believing began to boil over and I had almost a complete crisis of faith. I began to question it all. Those deep truths that I learned as a child, through my teenage years, college years, and as a young adult, suddenly didn’t seem so solid. It says in the Word that God loves me, that He loved me so much that He sent His only son to die for me, to have a relationship with me, but I struggled to believe that.

Everything came to a head one night when I was sitting on my couch in an absolute puddle, questioning my salvation. There was no way for me to understand in that moment that God really loved me. He was a New York skyscraper and I was an ant on the ground. He was looking down at me with His arms crossed, frustrated, angry, and just shaking His head. There was no way He was delighted in me. How could He be? I was listening to teachers that I highly respected tell me over and over what it looked like to pour your life out for the gospel. I heard the same words in my head over and over saying, “You are such a failure. You aren’t making disciples that make disciples. You aren’t going to feed the poor. You aren’t reaching those in your neighborhood for Jesus. You aren’t adopting.” And I believed every thought in my head and made agreement with those things. I believed with all of my being that I WAS a failure at my core. Not that I just fail at times, but that my identity was that I am a failure. How COULD God ever delight in a complete screw-up? At that time in my life, the answer was simple: He couldn’t. So, there I sat in a ball, gripped with fear that at any moment this Righteous Judge was going to squash me. And rightfully so.

Somehow I got through that night. And the next. And the next.

And then something amazing happened. Early summer 2014, I began to receive fresh revelation from the Holy Spirit about many things that brought me to life. The first things I really began learning about were spiritual warfare and our true identity in Christ. I participated in a study by Priscilla Shirer called “Armor of God” and she began to teach about how important it is for us to see the war that is going on around us in the unseen world.

That was something that I was never taught about in depth. I didn’t know much about these dark forces, or that they are absolutely real. They are relentless in their pursuit of trying to destroy us. Ephesians 6:12 tells us plainly, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” Imagine my shock when I learned that not every thought that entered my head was my own! There are three voices in your head. Your own, the Lord’s and the enemy’s. You mean the enemy could be putting thoughts in my head to make me feel bad about myself? Yes. And then he turns around and blames you for it. It is his favorite way to work. It infuriates me.

But hang on tight, here’s the really good news. The enemy is completely disarmed. He was completely defeated at the cross. The ONLY authority he has in you right now is what you give him. So, when you start to recognize that lies you believe have been put there by him, you can completely send them away never to return. I began breaking off agreements that I had made left and right and chains were falling off in a dramatic way. I began to see in the Spirit more and began to recognize just how crafty the enemy was at twisting the truth. How he would take some of those great sermons I heard or great books that I read that were meant to encourage, and turned them around to make me feel like I was falling short. It is really easy to look around at what other heroes of the faith are doing and feel like you are falling short. But the more I spend time with Jesus, God the Father and Holy Spirit as they truly are, the more I recognize that they don’t see us like that. They see us like we are talked about in Romans. Perfected in the Spirit, full of righteousness, and one with Jesus, having been buried with Him and raised again. And they are so delighted in us. Intimacy and oneness with us is all they want.

Now for some of you reading that may sound scary. For years I couldn’t believe that there was that much grace. The words in Romans echoed in my head. If I really and truly understood that there was that much grace, wouldn’t I (even inadvertently) try to take advantage of it? If we are deceitful and wicked at our core, surely we would. But again. Here is something that we miss. Without Jesus, and the cross, and the resurrection, and grace, YES we are wicked and without hope. BUT, and this is a BIG but, when we come to know Jesus and say Yes to Him something MIRACULOUS happens. We are given a new heart! We are no longer labeled as wicked and deceitful! Quite the opposite! As Dan Stone and David Gregory say in their book The Rest of the Gospel, “God perfected those of us who are in Christ. We are complete in Him. (Colossians 2:10). We are His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are holy and blameless and beyond reproach (Colossians 1:22). There truths are already our reality above the line, in the unseen and eternal realm, in God’s kingdom, in our spirit. These are the eternal, unchanging truths of our identity as new creations, as sons and daughters whom God has birthed (John 3:3–6). Below the line, however, in the seen and temporal realm, we’re in the process of being sanctified. We have needs. Our emotions fluctuate. Our behavior changes. We experience growth.”

These are VITAL truths that I think many miss. I know I did for YEARS. What is going on in the unseen and eternal realm is so much more REAL than what we see and experience with our 5 senses. When you start walking with authority and in true identity, there is NO WAY you will take advantage of the grace that He has given us. When you see yourself how He sees you, you want to run as far away from sin as you can. To know that there is that much grace in the Lord is not something to fear. It will compel you to deeper intimacy with Jesus more than anything you can do out of duty, I guarantee it. If you are still struggling in a certain area, there is no condemnation there. You just don’t know who you are yet in that area!

As I started learning more about this, started receiving healing for wounds I had received in my heart, and as I started walking in deeper authority over the enemy, my life and faith drastically changed. I no longer saw Jesus as a NY skyscraper that wanted to squash me. I saw Him as a loving friend, my best friend that walks with me in my everyday life. When I’m doing the dishes, He’s there with me. When I am going to pick up my son, He’s in the passenger seat. The more I said Yes to Him and let Him into areas of my heart that were broken, the closer I got to Him, the more I started trusting the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the more I started walking as a confident daughter, and then I was compelled to say Yes even more. Now, I daily say Yes to Him, no matter what comes. Because I know that He is delighted to be with me and that no matter what I face, He will be right there with me. Rejoicing with me in times of joy, weeping with me in times of sorrow, holding me steady when fear tries to come at me again. Now when the fear comes, I know how to deal with it. And I don’t think of myself as the screw up that is dealing with fear again. I know where it comes from and I send it away almost as quickly as it comes.

Beloved, if you have a relationship with Jesus, do you realize that you are no longer a slave to sin? Do you realize that you are not deceitful and wicked at your core? That you have been given a NEW heart? That you have power over sin?

I didn’t for years, even though I had read it in the Word many times. I didn’t know it in my heart. But when you get that, and you know that you have POWER and AUTHORITY over dark forces trying to tempt you to sin, you get some righteous anger that will rise up inside. And your life will never look the same.

I lived for too long without the abundance of life that Jesus talks about in the Word. I never knew that so much of it was available here on the earth. After we went to Heaven, sure. But here? I could not see what that looked like. It is available for us all. Say Yes to Him today, dear ones. He is waiting. And He wants to heal every pain you have in your heart. Walking with Him is a journey. A wild, radical, amazing, sometimes hard but totally worth it journey. Say Yes to more of Him today. You will not regret it.

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