In the last blog I said I was going to expand on the truth that God’s will for us is His Word and His Word says that by the stripes of His Son we are healed. So if this is true then why are so many people sick and why do people die sooner than we think they should? This is something I get asked a lot.
What I am not going to do in this blog is make a statement of argument against theological teachings. This would only cause strife and then I would be no different than a religious teacher who Jesus spoke against when He walked the earth. What I am going to do is give some insight and then you can choose what you do with it. What I have learned and lived may be different from what you have, and that doesn’t make me right and you wrong, and vice-versa. We have an individual responsibility to search the Scriptures, commune with God, and learn for ourselves. So what I write today is from my perspective and my intention is that it will stir up a desire for you to go deeper in your relationship with God and encourage you to spend more time building that relationship. My desire is that you will want to seek God’s wisdom and understanding with your whole heart as Jeremiah 29 talks about. We seek Him and find Him when we seek Him with our whole heart.
Here is my observation:
We live in a fallen world and there are natural laws in effect. If Adam and Eve would have not chosen to eat of the fruit we would all be living in a perfect world and these natural laws would not be present the way they are as we know them. Unfortunately that is not the case. As a result we live in a world that has sickness and premature death. I hear people say that God is Sovereign and He is, but these people say that in the context that God is in control of everything and that He causes everything to happen. This is not a belief I hold to and here’s why. God does have ultimate control but He does not use that control in an abusive way. God is not a respecter of persons and He does not choose to heal some while choosing to cause some to suffer and die prematurely. That would be cruel and contradictory to His Word, which would make Him a liar.
In John 8 Jesus said that satan is the liar and in fact, the father of lies. Through our covenant relationship with Jesus Christ we have been given the ability to be healed and to heal, yet so many people don’t see this covenant promise at work in their lives on a consistent basis. Why? I believe there are several reasons for this but I am only going to talk about a couple of them in this blog. One reason I believe is that we get overwhelmed by what our natural eyes see and oftentimes lose sight of the spiritual battle that is taking place in a realm that is beyond it. I believe that because of this it is easier to accept what is going on in our natural world and easier to say things like, “It must have been God’s will or it wouldn’t be happening or it wouldn’t have happened.” I also believe that for some people it gives them the right to blame God’s sovereignty when sickness and death occur. This kind of thinking gives satan a foothold in our faith and makes us question God’s Word. Both are destructive to our relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
When Jesus walked the earth, healed the sick, and raised the dead, He didn’t heal everyone. In fact if you study out when and who He healed you will find that every time there was a measure of faith in the person or the people coming to Him that believed He had the power to heal. Those who believed were healed and those who believed were strengthened in their faith. But Jesus didn’t play favorites with the people He healed. There was something taking place that we have to study and understand if we are going to see the healing power of Jesus Christ working in our lives. One of those things is that with every promise there is a condition, and one of the conditions is acting in faith on the promise. We also have to understand that there is a natural realm and a spiritual realm and both are in effect in every situation. Sometimes there is physical healing and sometimes there is spiritual healing. And sometimes there is both.
This has played out in my life on many occasions. There have been times I have been sick and prayed and been instantly healed physically, while other times I have suffered for weeks. Why? Was God being kind on the occasions of instant healing and cruel during the other times? Absolutely not! He is the same yesterday, today, and forever! He doesn’t change and He cannot contradict Himself. I believe that at times when I believe and act in faith I get physical healing accompanied with spiritual growth and at other times I get a spiritual healing and then my body recovers over time. So just my faith alone doesn’t assure instant healing and just because I have a lack of faith doesn’t mean I won’t be instantly healed. My responsibility is to allow God full access to my physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental condition and allow Him to work in me to bring the healing in my body.
My confusion or misunderstanding of God comes when I try to dictate the healing He needs to provide. When I surrender my will to His, I see healing take place every time. The healing isn’t always in the areas I feel need healing and when I let go of my control over the situation I see the power of Christ working in my life to bring the healing that was promised through His death and resurrection. I also understand that there are times when healing is instant and there are other times when healing is a process. So to say I didn’t have enough faith during the times I was sick for weeks would also be ludicrous!
Here is a truth I have discovered that I want you to understand. We cannot peer into the spiritual realm and the truth of God’s Word in our natural mind and with our natural eye or we will go crazy trying to make sense of it all. We have to set aside our limited understanding as Proverbs 3 talks about and trust in God, acknowledge Him in all our ways, and submit ourselves to learning about Him for ourselves. This is the only way we will be able to accept Christ as our healer. This will also keep us from becoming embittered or feeling condemned if we or someone we know is suffering from sickness and they are not recovering or if someone dies prematurely.
Christ took on the stripes of sickness and death at the Cross and we have the promise of healing and if we are going to see that promise take root in our lives , we have to go deeper in gaining wisdom and understanding in this area. The first step is to trust in God. If we lack trust then when we learn a truth about healing we will instantly question that truth. This will cause us to counter that truth from a human prospective and stunt our growth in gaining wisdom and understanding. This is the enemy’s first tactic in getting us to accept the natural realm as a fact of life, and get us to question the truth that Christ is our healer. Isaiah 53:1 says, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” So the first thing we have to do is choose whose report we are going to believe. Before I write the next blog this is the question I want to pose. Whose report do you believe?
Here is something else I want to ask you before I write the next blog. Do you believe that God’s desire is that everyone should come to a saving knowledge of Christ and be saved? Do you believe that Christ died on the Cross so that all could come to a saving knowledge of Him? Do you believe that Christ paid the price for sin? Do you believe that God causes people to sin? Do you believe that the Cross is the finished work of God and that at the Cross Jesus overcame the world and that God made a new covenant with His people through Christ’s death and resurrection? Do you believe that people have to have faith and believe in Christ to obtain the promise of salvation?
I know this may sound like it is off the subject but it isn’t. There is a reason I am asking these questions and in the next blog you will understand the reason for them. Again, this blog series is written to encourage you to go to the next level in your walk with God and intended to stir up a desire to grow more intimate in your relationship with Him. Be blessed and may the peace of God reign in your heart today.
To be continued………………………………..
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Own Your Life, Live On Purpose! Part 5
Over the next couple of blogs I am going to break down some of the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection as it pertains to our lives as believers. I pray that it brings you encouragement and hope. I am going to use the Amplified Bible for the Scriptures I reference as it gives an expanded explanation of the verses.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law!
Galatians 3:13 “Christ purchased our freedom [redeeming us] from the curse (doom) of the Law [and its condemnation] by [Himself] becoming a curse for us, for it is written [in the Scriptures], Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (is crucified);
For years I felt that somehow I didn’t measure up and that God was displeased with me because I couldn’t keep from sinning. I tried everything I could to keep the letter of the Law and live a righteous life. This only led me to feeling defeated and angry at myself for being so weak and sinful. I beat myself up mentally and worked at pleasing God even more. When I read this passage, everything changed! Here I was trying to accomplish something that was impossible and something that Christ had already done for me! A burden was lifted that day and I became free from the guilt and condemnation that had consumed my mind over the years.
My focus began to be on gaining an understanding of what it meant to be a new creation in Christ and what his death and resurrection meant for me personally. It was as if the blinders I had worn for so many years had been taken from my eyes and I was beginning to see the truth of God’s Word more clearly. The result of this was I began to live an empowered life that had the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit operating in my life, not because I was trying to have it, but because I allowed Christ to live through me and the only thing He knows to live is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control! What a relief it was to come to this understanding.
Jesus became sin that I could be made the righteous of God in Christ Jesus!
2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake He made Christ [virtually] to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in and through Him we might become [endued with, viewed as being in, and examples of] the righteousness of God [what we ought to be, approved and acceptable and in right relationship with Him, by His goodness].”
You have no idea how many years I spent trying to be righteous, do righteous deeds, speak righteous words, and have righteous actions. Then I read Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” When I understood that right standing with God comes through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone a huge burden lifted off my shoulders. I could accept that I could not be righteous on my own, have faith in Christ to be righteous for me, and seek an intimate relationship with God that was not hindered by my feelings of inadequacy and shame. I then realized that because I live in a fallen world I will always sin but the beauty of Christ taking on sin at the cross is that sin no longer has a hold on me when I understand and walk in the truth of Christ’s resurrection. When thoughts come that remind me of my sin, I just say, “return to sender, address unknown” and I am set free from guilt and condemnation that satan and my own mind try to trap me in.
The word sin means “missing the mark” and when I discovered this it made life so much easier. People miss the mark all of the time but somehow the word sin always had caused me deep rooted anxiety as if I had murdered a friend and needed to cover it up. When I reframed the word sin to “missing the mark” then it made it so much easier to regroup my thoughts and turn away from the sin whenever I did sin. This is when the truth finally set me free from the bondage and captivity I had lived in for years in the area of sin! I was able to accept my righteousness through my relationship with Christ Jesus!
Christ became poverty that I could become rich!
1 Corinthians 8:9 “For you are becoming progressively acquainted with and recognizing more strongly and clearly the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (His kindness, His gracious generosity, His undeserved favor and spiritual blessing), [in] that though He was [so very] rich, yet for your sakes He became [so very] poor, in order that by His poverty you might become enriched (abundantly supplied).
Over the years I have heard many teachings on money and the question of whether it is God’s will for the Christian to be wealthy or not. Most teachings I have heard sway to the side of belief that says we should not be rich because money is the root of all evil.
1 Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have been led astray and have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many acute [mental] pangs.”
God says we are to have no other Gods before him and the pursuit of money is a God. But if people put God first then money can be the root of blessing if it is used to sow seeds into the kingdom of God. We have to rightly divide the Word of God so that we can walk in truth and in God’s blessing. I have come to understand that it is never God’s desire for us to live in poverty. Jesus became poor so that we could be made rich and use the money to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God can’t contradict Himself so He can’t say one thing and then do another. We do that not Him! The Christian world is full of people plagued with a poverty mentality because satan has blinded them from the truth and skewed their view so that they don’t walk in the abundance that God has for them. As a result they are trapped by the chains of debt, addictions, lack, etc. and they don’t walk in financial abundance. It is time for us to turn the Word of God on satan as Jesus did in the desert and gain victory over the attacks of satan on our financial lives. Jesus won the victory of the war at the cross and we have to fight from a stance of victory if we are going to win the battle of the mind daily!
Jesus became sickness so I could be healed!
Isaiah 53:5 “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.” (Bold Type added)
1 Peter 2:24b “By His wounds you have been healed.”
It is difficult sometimes for me to wrap my mind around this truth because I suffer sickness and watch others suffer from it as well. I see people who are sick and never recover. Our earthly reality is completely the opposite of this Scriptural truth and yet God says we are healed since Jesus took on sickness at the cross. I have seen the dead raised, the blind eyes opened, the deaf hear, and the lame walk, and yet my mind still questions if this is possible whenever I am sick or those I love are sick if we can be healed. This dampers my prayers and my faith whenever I do this. Then when I pray or I hear people pray I hear this, “God if it is your will, please heal me or heal them.”
Do you know how crazy that sounds now that I know the truth of the Word? As if God’s will is that I would not be healed! What is the will of God? His will is His Word and His word says that by His stripes we are healed. We live in a fallen world and sickness and death are a reality but that does not mean it is God’s will for us to be sick and die. We have to get to a place where we stand on God’s Word and use it as a weapon to fight satan when he attacks our minds with doubt in regards to this truth. We have to stand and fight until we see our reality catch up to His truth. Since this is such a hard concept to understand I am going to go into detail about this subject in my next blog and then I will continue the series on the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection.
To be continued……………………………………………………
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law!
Galatians 3:13 “Christ purchased our freedom [redeeming us] from the curse (doom) of the Law [and its condemnation] by [Himself] becoming a curse for us, for it is written [in the Scriptures], Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (is crucified);
For years I felt that somehow I didn’t measure up and that God was displeased with me because I couldn’t keep from sinning. I tried everything I could to keep the letter of the Law and live a righteous life. This only led me to feeling defeated and angry at myself for being so weak and sinful. I beat myself up mentally and worked at pleasing God even more. When I read this passage, everything changed! Here I was trying to accomplish something that was impossible and something that Christ had already done for me! A burden was lifted that day and I became free from the guilt and condemnation that had consumed my mind over the years.
My focus began to be on gaining an understanding of what it meant to be a new creation in Christ and what his death and resurrection meant for me personally. It was as if the blinders I had worn for so many years had been taken from my eyes and I was beginning to see the truth of God’s Word more clearly. The result of this was I began to live an empowered life that had the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit operating in my life, not because I was trying to have it, but because I allowed Christ to live through me and the only thing He knows to live is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control! What a relief it was to come to this understanding.
Jesus became sin that I could be made the righteous of God in Christ Jesus!
2 Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake He made Christ [virtually] to be sin Who knew no sin, so that in and through Him we might become [endued with, viewed as being in, and examples of] the righteousness of God [what we ought to be, approved and acceptable and in right relationship with Him, by His goodness].”
You have no idea how many years I spent trying to be righteous, do righteous deeds, speak righteous words, and have righteous actions. Then I read Isaiah 64:6, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” When I understood that right standing with God comes through Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone a huge burden lifted off my shoulders. I could accept that I could not be righteous on my own, have faith in Christ to be righteous for me, and seek an intimate relationship with God that was not hindered by my feelings of inadequacy and shame. I then realized that because I live in a fallen world I will always sin but the beauty of Christ taking on sin at the cross is that sin no longer has a hold on me when I understand and walk in the truth of Christ’s resurrection. When thoughts come that remind me of my sin, I just say, “return to sender, address unknown” and I am set free from guilt and condemnation that satan and my own mind try to trap me in.
The word sin means “missing the mark” and when I discovered this it made life so much easier. People miss the mark all of the time but somehow the word sin always had caused me deep rooted anxiety as if I had murdered a friend and needed to cover it up. When I reframed the word sin to “missing the mark” then it made it so much easier to regroup my thoughts and turn away from the sin whenever I did sin. This is when the truth finally set me free from the bondage and captivity I had lived in for years in the area of sin! I was able to accept my righteousness through my relationship with Christ Jesus!
Christ became poverty that I could become rich!
1 Corinthians 8:9 “For you are becoming progressively acquainted with and recognizing more strongly and clearly the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ (His kindness, His gracious generosity, His undeserved favor and spiritual blessing), [in] that though He was [so very] rich, yet for your sakes He became [so very] poor, in order that by His poverty you might become enriched (abundantly supplied).
Over the years I have heard many teachings on money and the question of whether it is God’s will for the Christian to be wealthy or not. Most teachings I have heard sway to the side of belief that says we should not be rich because money is the root of all evil.
1 Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have been led astray and have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many acute [mental] pangs.”
God says we are to have no other Gods before him and the pursuit of money is a God. But if people put God first then money can be the root of blessing if it is used to sow seeds into the kingdom of God. We have to rightly divide the Word of God so that we can walk in truth and in God’s blessing. I have come to understand that it is never God’s desire for us to live in poverty. Jesus became poor so that we could be made rich and use the money to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God can’t contradict Himself so He can’t say one thing and then do another. We do that not Him! The Christian world is full of people plagued with a poverty mentality because satan has blinded them from the truth and skewed their view so that they don’t walk in the abundance that God has for them. As a result they are trapped by the chains of debt, addictions, lack, etc. and they don’t walk in financial abundance. It is time for us to turn the Word of God on satan as Jesus did in the desert and gain victory over the attacks of satan on our financial lives. Jesus won the victory of the war at the cross and we have to fight from a stance of victory if we are going to win the battle of the mind daily!
Jesus became sickness so I could be healed!
Isaiah 53:5 “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole.” (Bold Type added)
1 Peter 2:24b “By His wounds you have been healed.”
It is difficult sometimes for me to wrap my mind around this truth because I suffer sickness and watch others suffer from it as well. I see people who are sick and never recover. Our earthly reality is completely the opposite of this Scriptural truth and yet God says we are healed since Jesus took on sickness at the cross. I have seen the dead raised, the blind eyes opened, the deaf hear, and the lame walk, and yet my mind still questions if this is possible whenever I am sick or those I love are sick if we can be healed. This dampers my prayers and my faith whenever I do this. Then when I pray or I hear people pray I hear this, “God if it is your will, please heal me or heal them.”
Do you know how crazy that sounds now that I know the truth of the Word? As if God’s will is that I would not be healed! What is the will of God? His will is His Word and His word says that by His stripes we are healed. We live in a fallen world and sickness and death are a reality but that does not mean it is God’s will for us to be sick and die. We have to get to a place where we stand on God’s Word and use it as a weapon to fight satan when he attacks our minds with doubt in regards to this truth. We have to stand and fight until we see our reality catch up to His truth. Since this is such a hard concept to understand I am going to go into detail about this subject in my next blog and then I will continue the series on the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection.
To be continued……………………………………………………
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Own Your Life, Live On Purpose! Part 4
"Not because of who I am, but because of what you've done, not because of what I've done, but because of who you are!" What an incredible realization to come to in understanding who we are in Christ! When we can begin to see the reflection in the mirror as the image of Christ's death and resurrection, we will begin to understand to the depths His love goes in reaching us! On the surface my mirror reflects the images of a wounded person who has struggled with self doubt and feelings of insecutrity, hopelessness, pain, and sin. But when I can begin to imagine how much God loved me on the day He chose to send His Son to the earth to die for mankind, those images begin to fade away!
I am overwhelmed at the thought that on that day when Christ stepped out of the Heaven and entered the world's atmosphere, God spoke my name! I could imagine Him saying, "Your journey will be painful and your suffering great, but I want my daughter Holly to spend eternity with me, so I need you to go to earth and then to hell and take back the keys from satan so that she can be set free from captivity and spend an eternity with Me!" Everyone know John 3:16 by heart but do people really grasp the enormity of the meaning behind it? Sometimes I think this is a verse that has been quoted so many times that its effect on the person who hears it may have lost some of its meaning.
For God so loved Holly that He gave His one and only Son, that if she will just believe in Me, she will not perish, but have eternal life! When I began to grasp the true meaning of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross at a personal level, my self- pity and feelings of self doubt began to fade away! I started believing the Word of God over my reality and the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection over my doubt! This began to do a work inside of me that has changed my life!
When feelings and thoughts of past failures begin to creep into my mind, I speak Romans 8:6, “The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;” If my mind is wrapped up in the failures of my life, my mind will be consumed with thoughts of death and relational destruction. When my mind is controlled by the Spirit my thoughts are life and peace! When I remember the people I have wounded over the years and my heart begins to break, I remember Isaiah 53:5, “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”
I am constantly reminding myself that it is not because of who I am, but because of what He’s done and it’s not because of what I’ve done, but because of who He is! Without Him I am nothing and my life is just a vapor in the wind. The Lord always hears me when I call on Him and He always catches me when I am falling! I am no longer ever alone and nothing I have ever done can ever be used against me again because at the Cross Jesus took it on Himself so that I could be set free from it!
I hope you are beginning to understand the need to grasp the enormity of what Christ did for us on the Cross! I want to challenge you to begin writing down everything you have ever suffered, dealt with, or experienced that has ever left you feeling like you didn’t somehow measure up in the eyes of God. Then I want you to spend time investigating the true meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection so that you can be set free from everything that hinders you from walking in an intimate relationship with God, through your relationship with Jesus Christ! Write down John 3:16 and put your name in it. Speak it daily whenever you look in the mirror. I can guarantee that it will be a short time before your battle scars of past failures or memories begin to fade as mine have!
This is when God can begin to turn your pain into power, your hurt into help, your self- pity into acts of servant hood, and your failures into victories! To be continued…….
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Own Your Life, Live On Purpose, Part 3
In the last blog I said I was going to write about the meaning of Christ's death and resurrection. Before I do I am going to write a couple of personal stories and post two videos for you to view.
When I watched the movie, “The Passion of the Christ” my whole life changed! Before this movie I had always envisioned Jesus hanging on the Cross with a few drops of blood trickling down His face. This image though disturbing, didn’t have the impact on me that the images Mel Gibson portrayed in the movie did. My entire life I had seen pictures of Christ sitting in green meadows surrounded by children and holding a lamb in His arms. Or I imagined Him dressed in royal attire walking with His disciples down a dirt road. Though inspiring they did little to empower me to become a Christ centered individual. In fact they left me feeling squeamish and a little ashamed to be honest. These images were in dire contrast to the life I lived and I never really could wrap my mind around being in that place myself because I knew the darkness that lived inside of me.
You see what I began to do in my life was I tried to live up to an expectation that I thought God had of me, to be sweet and gentle, and put together. I tried to speak softly and treat people kindly only to find myself annoyed and angry most of the time. I tried to be a good friend only to find myself judging people when they didn’t live up to my expectations. No matter how hard I tried to be perfect and imitate Christ I failed. When I looked in the mirror I saw a woman who yelled at my children, had impure thoughts, and was oftentimes self- absorbed with little or no time for others.
I found myself walking away from the mirror and feeling like I could never measure up. I cried out to God for years asking Him to make me like Jesus! I wanted to be gentle and kind. I wanted to have it all together and make the right choices in life. I guess what I wanted was to be perfect! I wanted the images in the mirror to go away! When I saw this movie and realized who Jesus really was and what He went through during his last days of life, everything changed for me! I began to see the dark side of Jesus! I am not saying Jesus was dark, for in Him there was no darkness. I am saying I saw the darkness that He walked in everyday and the impact it had on the people around Him. His friends were thieves and sluts and liars. He didn’t judge them, He loved them and because of that love, they changed! I then began to look back on my life at times when I lived in darkness and I began to envision Christ sitting with me, loving me! I began to reframe my past and this is what I saw.
When I chose to walk away from Him, He CHOSE to follow me no matter where I went. Here is where we went together and what He did for me in those dark places. When I chose to get drunk and make a fool of myself, He CHOSE to sit with me and didn’t condemn me! When I chose to have sex with strangers, He CHOSE to lay down with me, call me His bride, and never called me a slut! When I chose to lie and manipulate, He CHOSE to whisper His love and acceptance in my ear! When I chose to hate people and I used words to destroy them, He CHOSE to speak words of encouragement and hope! When I chose to kill my children through abortion, He CHOSE to restore my body and give me more children! I could go on forever but you get the point!
HE CHOSE TO DIE FOR ME SO THAT I COULD LIVE! HE CHOSE TO SUFFER FOR ME SO THAT I COULD BE HEALED! HE CHOSE TO BE HATED FOR ME SO THAT I COULD BE ACCEPTED! MY JESUS BLED AND DIED FOR ME! This was no small task! This cost Him everything but because He loved me, He went through with it. As this reality sunk in I became empowered to learn how to become Christ like! This is when my mission in life began to take flight. I have always befriended the weak and the lost but I think I thought I could somehow save them from the life of destruction I had lived. I changed my thinking and began to gain an understanding of Christ’s death and resurrection and now I allow Christ to live through me, loving them where they are, for who they are, with no strings attached! I am now seeing their lives being changed, not because of me being perfect but because of the perfected life of Christ living through me and loving them through me!
When I look in the mirror now I see the battle scars of wounds I have suffered and I am not ashamed! I see the beauty of a beaten Savior looking back at me who understands my pain and loss. I see the completed work of the Cross and an opportunity to reach others with the love of Christ! I think we have reduced Christ’s sacrifice to the point of it having little or no impact on our lives and because of it the thieves and sluts and liars are not drawn to us. I believe we need to embrace the reality of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross so that we can live empowered lives of hope and healing for a hurting and dying world to see. I believe it is time for a change! To be continued……….
PLEASE WATCH THE VIDEO BELOW!
When I watched the movie, “The Passion of the Christ” my whole life changed! Before this movie I had always envisioned Jesus hanging on the Cross with a few drops of blood trickling down His face. This image though disturbing, didn’t have the impact on me that the images Mel Gibson portrayed in the movie did. My entire life I had seen pictures of Christ sitting in green meadows surrounded by children and holding a lamb in His arms. Or I imagined Him dressed in royal attire walking with His disciples down a dirt road. Though inspiring they did little to empower me to become a Christ centered individual. In fact they left me feeling squeamish and a little ashamed to be honest. These images were in dire contrast to the life I lived and I never really could wrap my mind around being in that place myself because I knew the darkness that lived inside of me.
You see what I began to do in my life was I tried to live up to an expectation that I thought God had of me, to be sweet and gentle, and put together. I tried to speak softly and treat people kindly only to find myself annoyed and angry most of the time. I tried to be a good friend only to find myself judging people when they didn’t live up to my expectations. No matter how hard I tried to be perfect and imitate Christ I failed. When I looked in the mirror I saw a woman who yelled at my children, had impure thoughts, and was oftentimes self- absorbed with little or no time for others.
I found myself walking away from the mirror and feeling like I could never measure up. I cried out to God for years asking Him to make me like Jesus! I wanted to be gentle and kind. I wanted to have it all together and make the right choices in life. I guess what I wanted was to be perfect! I wanted the images in the mirror to go away! When I saw this movie and realized who Jesus really was and what He went through during his last days of life, everything changed for me! I began to see the dark side of Jesus! I am not saying Jesus was dark, for in Him there was no darkness. I am saying I saw the darkness that He walked in everyday and the impact it had on the people around Him. His friends were thieves and sluts and liars. He didn’t judge them, He loved them and because of that love, they changed! I then began to look back on my life at times when I lived in darkness and I began to envision Christ sitting with me, loving me! I began to reframe my past and this is what I saw.
When I chose to walk away from Him, He CHOSE to follow me no matter where I went. Here is where we went together and what He did for me in those dark places. When I chose to get drunk and make a fool of myself, He CHOSE to sit with me and didn’t condemn me! When I chose to have sex with strangers, He CHOSE to lay down with me, call me His bride, and never called me a slut! When I chose to lie and manipulate, He CHOSE to whisper His love and acceptance in my ear! When I chose to hate people and I used words to destroy them, He CHOSE to speak words of encouragement and hope! When I chose to kill my children through abortion, He CHOSE to restore my body and give me more children! I could go on forever but you get the point!
HE CHOSE TO DIE FOR ME SO THAT I COULD LIVE! HE CHOSE TO SUFFER FOR ME SO THAT I COULD BE HEALED! HE CHOSE TO BE HATED FOR ME SO THAT I COULD BE ACCEPTED! MY JESUS BLED AND DIED FOR ME! This was no small task! This cost Him everything but because He loved me, He went through with it. As this reality sunk in I became empowered to learn how to become Christ like! This is when my mission in life began to take flight. I have always befriended the weak and the lost but I think I thought I could somehow save them from the life of destruction I had lived. I changed my thinking and began to gain an understanding of Christ’s death and resurrection and now I allow Christ to live through me, loving them where they are, for who they are, with no strings attached! I am now seeing their lives being changed, not because of me being perfect but because of the perfected life of Christ living through me and loving them through me!
When I look in the mirror now I see the battle scars of wounds I have suffered and I am not ashamed! I see the beauty of a beaten Savior looking back at me who understands my pain and loss. I see the completed work of the Cross and an opportunity to reach others with the love of Christ! I think we have reduced Christ’s sacrifice to the point of it having little or no impact on our lives and because of it the thieves and sluts and liars are not drawn to us. I believe we need to embrace the reality of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross so that we can live empowered lives of hope and healing for a hurting and dying world to see. I believe it is time for a change! To be continued……….
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