The Healing Journey - Part 2 - Identity of Our Own

 

I was 45 at the time my first marriage dissolved right before my eyes. I chose to face this new abandonment issue with the courage of an unsinkable Molly Brown, who heroically survived the sinking of the Titanic.

My boss at that time, a healing codependent, taught me that I am a person too, and I may minister to myself just as diligently as I minister to other people. That came as a revelation to me.

From this point on, I started to care for my own needs rather than to expect my mate or children or friends to care for them. I realized that Jesus encourages us to love others as we love our self.

To ignore our needs and to expect others to meet them is a classic codependent behavior, which needs healing. I got in touch with my body, soul and spirit and started to pay attention to and to meet my needs.

My joy increased as I realized that God continued to provide for me, and that He cared about me on every level of life. He died to save me from myself and to help me to enter into His ultimate rest (Hebrews 4:10).  

I spent the next two years learning that God is our true husband (Isaiah 54:5). He provides for our every need as we trust in Him and rely on His benevolence and grace.

There is nothing too difficult for Him (Luke 18:27). He can work miraculous wonders on our behalf, even when we least expect it. He provided me with a job, a home and new friends who nurtured me.

They too were recovering divorcees and many were codependent, just like me. We learned from each other, had fun times together and met each week to learn how to begin life again as single people.

Prayer:

Father God, thank You for giving us teachers with wisdom on how to get free from our past, to heal from our current situation and to look forward to the future with faith in You. We learned to depend on Your love rather than a person's love and to trust You even when we cannot trust people.

You bring us out of moments of depression, provide for our every need, put a new song on our lips and give us an identity of our own that has its source in You rather than in our accomplishments or in other people. You are our all in all both now and throughout eternity, and we delight in living in Your courts and finding refuge under Your wings.

Thought for the Day:

We come to the breaking point in our life where we invite Christ to be more and more at home in our heart, so that we can be filled with the fullest measure of His presence.

- Ephesians 3:16-19 (Amplified Bible)

Feasting on God's Word

 

I have spent the last few months gardening in containers, which are spaced throughout my tiny outside flower garden. Some plants did better than the others. My tomatoes flourished and are still producing juicy, rich tomatoes. The peppers did well and are still sparsely bearing fruit. However, the okra, squash, green beans, celery and onions all failed to generate any usable fruit.

This reminds me of Jesus’ parable concerning the four types of soil: some seed fell upon the path, others among the thorns, many within the rocks and then just a few on the good soil. If the ground is hard, thorny or rocky, there is no room for the roots. It is only in a garden of prepared soil that a plant can take hold and grow to full maturity.

Similarly, our spiritual food is found in the rich depths of the Word of God. The only way to withstand the winds of adversity or the scorching trials and temptation we encounter in this life is to have our roots sunk deeply into a spiritually fertile environment. Jesus said that we will know His disciples by their fruit.

If His disciples are to produce fruit, they need good, rich, tilled, spiritually fertilized soil. As we receive God’s Word with conviction and repentance, we are ready to receive the proper nourishment. We feast on God’s Word, reading it every day to prepare the soil, so that we will bloom where God plants us.

Many of today’s churches are barren wastelands with nothing spiritually nutritious to offer the Believer. They focus on providing glitz and glitter to attract people, and then they supply only spiritual junk food, rather than wholesome nourishment. However, God is still raising up an army of teachers with every generation - those people who faithfully sow the seeds of the truth of God’s Word.

Prayer:

Father God, remind us to feast on Your Word throughout the day. We eat three physical meals a day, and we need at least that many spiritual meals in order to have a healthy spirit and an intimate relationship with You. Provide us with teachers who seek You in prayer before they share Your Word. Lead us to a caring and loving fellowship of Believers. Even in these end times, please keep a remnant of spiritual teachers, preaching Your truth on which we can feast, Biblical principles, which enable us to bear much fruit.

Thought for the Day:
A lifetime commitment to feast on God’s Word gives us the spiritual strength to minister for Him in every area in which He calls us.
– Ephesians 2:10

 

The Choice is Yours

 

We make dozens of choices every day: when to wake up, where to work, what to eat, what clothes to wear. Any choice we make in life takes our full trust. We trust in our parents, teachers, employers, finances and our roof not to leak. Yet, we find it too hard to trust in God. We fear that He will require too much from us, ruin all of our fun or let us down one too many times. The truth is that following God is the only choice that offers a 100% guarantee.

Our parents may pass away, our teachers change every year, our employers lay us off, our commodities fail, and it’s inevitable that our roof will leak at some time or another. Yet, God gives us a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). His plans give us ultimate success rather than failure. We may lose a battle, but He already won the war over sin and death. He offers us eternal life, which starts the moment we submit our life to Him. Our surrender is gradual, but consistent.

As Catholics, my parents baptized me at birth. Then at age 12, I went through confirmation. The purpose of this exercise was to allow me to choose Christ for myself. However, I had no idea what I was doing. The nuns made me memorize an entire booklet of catechism questions, and then stand before the Bishop who slapped my cheek to remind me to stay true to Christ regardless of persecution. Neither baptism nor confirmation taught me to trust in Christ.

I did religious rituals out of obedience to my parents, but they had no spiritual significance for me at all. It was in my first year of college when I read, The Cross and the Switchblade, by David Wilkerson, that I saw the stark distinction between saved and unsaved people. The unsaved struggled endlessly to carve out a living in this life. The saved trusted in Christ for everything. He provides their secure and abundant life on earth and for eternity (Proverbs 16:9). I quickly surrendered my life to Christ.

A life in Christ has nothing to do with self-effort (Ephesians 2:8-9), and everything to do with ceasing from our labor and entering into Christ’s rest (Hebrews 4:10). Life no longer includes our choices. As we take our delight in Him, God puts His desires in our heart (Psalm 37:4). We submit to God’s Spirit who leads us to function in the work, which God prepared for us to do before we were born (Ephesians 2:10). The best choice is to the do the will of Him who sent us (John 4:34).

Prayer:

Father God, You predestined us according to Your foreknowledge to live in such a way that we advance Your Kingdom in the earth as we fulfill Your will for us (Ephesians 1:11; Romans 8:29). This takes all the guesswork out of our life. We simply follow the leading of Your Spirit each and every moment of the day. We are persuaded that You will keep us until the day we come to dwell with you (2 Timothy 1:12).

Thought for the Day:

We intimately know the God who gave His life for us, and lives in and through us. – Philippians 2:12-13