Lay Your Heavy Load On God

Posted on by
Reply

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 (NASB)

When we first come to the Lord, we come with baggage. For some of us, that baggage is great because of the trauma we suffered as children. I will never forget asking for prayer at the home group I attended. After everyone laid hands on me (we pray Pentecostal style at my church) and prayed for me. Someone said that while praying for me he had a vision of me carrying a heavy backpack. He told me that God’s message to me was to put down the backpack.

Are you carrying a heavy load? Is the backpack too heavy for you to lug around anymore? Come to Jesus, and ask Him to set you free from that heavy load.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Do I Really Have To Forgive The One Who Sexually Abused Me?

Posted on by
Reply

“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Matthew 6:12

You know as a Christian that you must forgive those who hurt you. Do you really have to forgive the person who sexually abused you as a child? Doesn’t that let the perpetrator (of a crime against a child) off the proverbial hook? In order to answer those question, let me first explain what forgiveness and what it is not.

Forgiveness is a process of letting go of the negative emotions you have towards someone. It is about you, and setting yourself free from debilitating emotions such as anger and bitterness. It is not about excusing what the other person did. You don’t even have to tell the other person you forgive them. And you don’t have to welcome that person into your life.

Do you really have to forgive the person who sexually abused you as a child? If you want to be free from the soul-crushing pain caused by the abuse, then the answer is “YES!” However, if you would like to go through the rest of your life carrying the pain around like an un-welcomed backpack, then by all means, don’t forgive. If you are reading this, then chances are great you want to be freed from your pain.

How do you forgive? You make a choice to forgive. You say, “I choose to forgive so-and-so.” Then you ask God to make it real in your heart. In the words of Alexander Pope, “To err is human, to forgive divine.” You make the choice, and then invite God to do the work in your heart.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

The Blessings of Being Broken By God

Posted on by
Reply

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” Hebrews 4:12-13

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” John 12:24

As human beings we are body, soul and spirit. Our soul represents what the Bible often terms our ‘flesh.’ Let’s first look at the soul. Watchman Nee defines the soul, in his book The Release of the Spirit, as the part where “our thoughts, emotions and will” function. Our soul is what gets in our way as we try to serve God.

Have you ever wanted desperately to stop doing something you know is wrong, but struggled to stop? The part of you that wanted to stop is your spirit. Nee calls the spirit, “the inward place where God dwells.” When you became a Christian, Jesus came to live inside your spirit.

In the natural, when something is broken it no longer has use unless it can be repaired. With God, human beings cannot really be used by Him until their spirit can break through their soul. The process of brokenness is what the Apostle Paul calls crucifixion of our old self/flesh (see Romans 6:6, Galatians 2:19).

It sounds painful, and it is painful. However, allowing God to break us allows us to be used by Him, and to have intimacy with Him that we could not have without being broken. Make no mistake, fellow believer, you cannot have intimacy with God without allowing Him to break you. Your soul will get in the way.

Are you longing to feel God’s love for you? Do you desperately want to be intimate with God? Allow Him to break you so He can make you into the person He intended when He created you. You will NEVER regret it.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

When Major Breakthroughs Occur

Posted on by
Reply

The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD saying, “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will announce My words to you.” Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, “Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel. Jermiah 18:1-7 (NASB)

Brokenness is a blessing. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. No, it does not feel like a blessing while we are being broken by God. It is incredibly painful. However, brokenness is what we need as survivors of childhood trauma. The traumas we suffered cause us to become people we were not created to be. The passage in Jeremiah uses the metaphor of a potter remaking clay. Picture in your mind a clay being invisibly shaped on a pottery wheel. Suddenly a potter comes, gazes at the clay, sits down, and begins to reshape the clay.

We are the clay, and the traumas we suffered as children shaped us. We became filled with fear, guilt, shame, and an overwhelming sense of unworthiness. When we begin to cry out to God to deliver us, He reshapes us. Since we are not inanimate pieces of clay, but flesh and blood, the shaping process hurts like HE double hockey sticks. We have a free will because God did not create us as robots. Our flesh resists the pain of being reshaped, and we resist God at points. However, there comes a point when we finally realize we cannot resist God anymore because we are sick and tired of not being who we were created to be. At that point, major breakthroughs occur.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Cease and Desist Trying To Heal Yourself

Posted on by
Reply

TGIF Friday Devotional

“Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10

In Hebrew the phrase translated as “be still” actually means “cease and desist.” When it comes to emotional healing many of us need to “cease and desist” what we have been doing. The reality we need to fully grasp is that we cannot heal ourselves. The God who is exalted in the earth is the only one who can heal the human heart.

Are you wounded from childhood trauma? Have you tried to heal yourself? Cease and desist! Turn to God and ask Him to heal you.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post