The Healing of Wounds

'For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds,' declares the LORD. Jeremiah 30:17 (New American Standard Bible)

A phone conversation with a friend helped me to see an aspect of God’s restoration and healing that I have often missed. We were discussing times when things happen that cause painful memories to surface. Memories that we may have thought were safely tucked away. Hurts that we thought had become manageable. She shared something with me that God had been teaching her. When events happen and wounds are exposed it is like the removal of a bandage in order for the wound to be tended to. Each time this happens there may be additional pain involved but the wound is going through a process and will eventually be completely healed.

So often I want a quick, painless healing but that is not usually the case. Even though the wound may have taken only moments to be inflicted, it may take years for the wound to be healed. I am sure of a few things.

*As long as the pain continues to be felt, the wound is there, and as long as the wound is there God will faithfully tend to it.

*I am being changed during this process. I am not the same person I was when the wounding happened and I will not be the same person when it is all over. Growth, maturity, and wisdom will come of it. They will be the gold nuggets of my personal experience.

*The pain of each moment God tends to my wounds may last for several days but eventually joy and peace return. I must simply trust Him in the process.

*Along with healing, God is building a platform of ministry to others. The comfort and encouragement I have been blessed with along the way is what I will one day be able to give to others. There will be opportunities to teach others what I have learned. The day will come when I extend to a wounded individual the same help others are presently extending to me.

*No matter how deep the wound it is only temporary in light of eternity. My life is a vapor and so are my wounds.

*Healing and restoration are taking place even when I don’t see or feel it. God has promised to finish whatever He starts and when He is finished I will be amazed!

For now there may still be sorrow, tears, and pain to experience but I see it from a different perspective and invite God to proceed with the process of healing.

Father, You know my history as well as my future when it comes to the hurts of life. I yield to Your healing touch once more. Amen.

Power of Your Love - Hillsong
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga6Qtxzd6vk

Holiness is a furnace that transforms the men and women who enter it. - Eugene H.Peterson

In Such a Time as This

In the time when thou shalt be broken by the seas in the depths of the waters thy merchandise and all thy company in the midst of thee shall fall. Ezekiel 27:34 (King James Version)

Tyrus was a city of great wealth and importance in Old Testament times. Many nations where part of her commerce on the sea. Ezekiel 27 lists many who bought and sold merchandise from her and helped to build her into quite an empire of enterprise. But Ezekiel prophesied of a day when all her notoriety and importance would fall along with all who brought her that notoriety and importance.

Have you ever come to such a place of brokenness? All that you have looked to for identity, affirmation, acceptance, and significance has fallen and you are left with the reality of who you are in your aloneness and vulnerability? How many people and possessions would have to be removed from your life before reality would fill you with profound fear? What would it take to shake you to the very core of yourself and leave you wondering if you are going to actually survive the crash?

One author stated the ease with which we live our lives when all is going well and we are surrounded by the support of loving people in our life. But is that still the case when the props are removed and the sources of security are no longer in place? What does our internal world look like when we are forced to see wherein our security and significance is rooted? Who and what of this life would have to be removed before we could honestly say, “God is my All in all! He is my Everything!”

Disappointment eventually marks my path whenever my expectations, longings, and desires are directed toward anyone but God. He warns of the dangers and emptiness that result when I turn from the Fount of living waters and look to broken cisterns to quench the thirst of my soul. He knows the hindrances to the very wholeness and healing I long for. He has even brought an example across my path of one who at one time mirrored my own experiences. Her present freedom in Christ has fueled a spark of hope for me.

I take seriously the fact that some may be reading this who sense the truth of these words for themselves. They too have seen the futility of allowing anything or anyone besides God to be their Source of life. May each of us stand before Him today in honesty and openness. He offers healing and wholeness. Will we dare to receive it?

Father, You alone know the depths of my struggle and brokenness. I have experienced many things with You and realize afresh the experiences are not over. Teach me how to accept Your extravagant gifts of wholeness and healing. Amen.

Above All - Michael W. Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjYiEyu8Si8

Getting into God's Word and letting God's Word get into me one truth at a time.

Out of the Cave

To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified. Isaiah 61:3 (New King James Version)

It was a year ago that I rear ended a vehicle and found myself in the emergency room with a broken sternum. Pain medication was necessary at first and limits were put on how much I could lift. My duties at work were changed to accommodate my need for healing. Prayers were spoken on my behalf and appreciated tremendously. It took time for the bone to heal and the limitations to be lifted. Eventually the tenderness subsided as well as the thoughts of the incident. Lessons were learned and life went on. Physical restoration can often be more quickly obtained than damage to our emotions.

It was over three years ago that a change in relationship shook my world and the eventual severing of it caused me to crash emotionally. I entered a cave of internal darkness that was profound and seemingly impossible to leave. The loss and questions consumed me for the better part of a year. Enjoyment for life eluded me. It limited my perspective on life and my trust in others. I had come face to face with a pain I had never known before and a view of my own internal world that was not comfortable or pretty. Issues that I had been able to anesthetize through the relationship were exposed and felt. My world as I had known it was forever changed. The “medication” that was needed and applied was Scripture, prayers (mine as well as friends’), and the willingness of an accountability partner to enter the cave and spend two years walking me to the exit.

I don’t know the exact moment that exit was found but recently I realized I was no longer in the cave of darkness and pain. I realized that battles being fought were separate from the loss. Joy and laughter were finding their way back into my life and I was actually finding more and more times free from the consuming thoughts that had been so much a part of me. God had brought about the emotional healing that others had assured me He would but I floundered to believe. This morning, praise and thanksgiving have definitely replaced sorrow and I am delighting in the things I see God doing in other areas of my life.

I share this for two reasons. First, it has been so long in coming that I cannot help but talk about it! He has done a marvelous thing in my life and I HAVE to share it. Second, I know that some who are reading this need a word of encouragement that God will eventually bring them out of the emotional cave of pain they find themselves in presently. For them, it is dark and cold. Life is at a stand still and they are not sure things will ever change. They will change, my friends. I have absolutely no doubt about that….but it will take time. Know that the prayers are being lifted on your behalf and welcome any who will enter the cave to help you.

Father, thank you for what You have done for me and what You will do for others! Amen!!!

Help Me - Kathy Troccoli (one of my "cave" songs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmSSWHO8ueA

Getting into God's Word and letting God's Word get into me one truth at a time.

His Word to Me

He said, If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you. Exodus 15:26 (New International Version)

There are certain nuggets of truth that I need to allow God to engrave on the tablets of my heart and impress upon the walls of my mind. One of those nuggets is His title of Healer. Not just the Healer of nations and the Healer of another person’s life, but my Healer as well. I need to embrace this when I become over whelmed with places in me that still need healing. I need to verbalize this when I am tempted to give up. I need to repeat this to myself when there seem to be no other options than to just accept defeat.

This phrase, “I am the LORD who heals you” is a life line to me this morning. It is meant to anchor me with stability and safety. It is meant to keep my head above the waves on the sea of life. It is meant to be the reality I cling to in the midst of thoughts, feelings, and what my five senses experience. It is meant to assure me that He can do what I am unable to do.

One thing I have learned about healing of any kind….God will bring it about and it will take time. Maybe moments of time, decades, or a life time, but it will come. My part? Keep my ears open to His voice. Pay close attention to His daily directives. Walk in obedience to His direction and guidance. Failure to do so hinders my own progress and healing. Yet, I have come to realize that even in these areas I need His help. I need Him to develop in me listening ears, an attentive heart, and willing obedience.

I would love to say I get it right all the time but I know otherwise as do those who know me best. As does my heavenly Father. I drink in His words at a time when failure, floundering, and falling have been apparent. When my own weaknesses are blatantly apparent. When fears abound and hopelessness threatens to darken my path. In the midst of it all, He persists with His loving reminder that He is my Healer. He is my Helper. He is my All.

Father, You give me hope when I am hopeless, strength when I am weak, and clarity when I am confused. Remold this broken vessel into a masterpiece of beauty and dignity. Amen.

You Are My All in All - Michael W. Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVVW5EakyEc&feature=related

I welcome your questions and comments to any devotional thoughts. I am honored and delighted to share my journey with you and privileged to hear of yours.

My Healer

He went on turning away, in the way of his heart. I have seen his ways, but I will heal him. Isaiah 57:17,18 (New American Standard Bible)

So often we read the word “heal” in the Bible and we instantly think of physical healing. Throughout the Old and New Testaments there are certainly many references to that. While we may not see such extensive and abundant amounts of healing today, God is still healing people. While I have never experienced a physical healing from a disease, illness, or deformity, I have had the privilege and experience of the kind of healing today’s verse is referring to. A healing of my heart and spiritual sickness.

Isaiah 6:10 speaks of an insensitive heart, dull ears, dim eyes, and a heart that lacks understanding. Jeremiah 3:22 speaks of God healing unfaithfulness. These are conditions of the heart. I remember decade long times in my Christian life when I could not hear God’s voice, could not see His heart in Scripture, was not sensitive to His leading in my life, and was not faithful to daily come to Him in prayer. I was in desperate need of His healing touch but did not know how to go about receiving it.

I did not realize this kind of healing automatically happens as I seek an intimate, personal relationship with Him. He is aware of my need and my propensity to stray from Him. He has had His eye on me from the moment of my conception and has longed to reveal Himself to me as my Healer.

My personal healing took place the day I embraced the truth that God’s love is not dependent on what I do. That was the catalyst for what has now been an incredible four and a half year journey. It has completely changed my approach to prayer and Scripture. I never knew prayer was meant to be a two way conversation, whereby I do some of the talking and God does some of the talking. His whispers at times move me to tears.

I never knew reading the Bible could be so alive either. Every morning before I open my Bible I ask the Holy Spirit to speak to me. I ask Him to cause one verse to really stand out to me. The journal thoughts have been the fruit of those prayers. There are days I cannot write fast enough as He brings the thoughts to mind. And all of this started the day I said, “Father, show me Your heart in Scripture.” He is moved by such requests.

Father, You are so loving, gracious, and generous. Continue to show me where I need Your healing touch. Amen.

A Heart Like Yours by Cece Winans
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qa_IcFyxmF8

I welcome your questions and comments to any devotional thoughts. I am honored and delighted to share my journey with you and privileged to hear of yours. http://pathways2freedom.blogspot.com/

All Inclusive and Possible

Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.” Mark 10:27 (New International Version)

Jesus’ answer to His disciples regarding their confusion over something He said, is quickly becoming a needed ray of hope for me. While I could have quoted this verse with ease many times, I am finding there are places in my life where I have failed to appropriate it and believe it with confidence. Like the rooms of a house, there are areas I have conveniently closed the door to with the mind set that those parts of me will never change. I have come to view them as permanent and unfixable. Although the desire for transformation has been strong the hope has been non existent. While I could express it in many different ways, the bottom line is that I didn’t believe God would ever do a radical work in me. Others could be changed, healed, and set free but not me. I felt like my particular strongholds, addictions, and weaknesses were my permanent lot in life and it would simply be a matter of asking for the grace to fight them. But true change and deliverance was not what I dared to hope for.

It was this realization of resignation that God has used to actually give me hope. In light of today’s verse, I can now see that what I believed to be hopeless and permanent was simply another bold faced lie of the enemy! When God says “all” He means ALL! All things are possible with Him and that includes (not excludes) my personal areas of struggle and sin. I am not an exception. I am not a lost cause. I am not unfixable. I am not an impossibility. I am a prime candidate for His miraculous work of transformation and deliverance. In my day to day life, I can experience old things passing away and all things becoming new!

So starting TODAY I am choosing to believe God for a number of things. I am believing Him for transformation of my mind and heart. I am believing Him for the breaking of ALL strongholds and addictions. I am believing Him for freedom. I am believing Him for a new way to live life. I am believing Him to do all that is impossible for me to do. By God’s grace I am point blank believing Him. And with that belief, I choose to live with a renewed hope. My self imposed life sentence has just been revoked and I am stepping out of the prison of lies and limitations. I am now ready to live as if the miracle has already taken place!

Father, I confess my sin of unbelief to You. I look to You to do what only You can do in me. I receive Your promise of healing and wholeness. Amen.

Teach Me

Teach me what I do not see. Job 34:32 NASB

I spotted this verse yesterday and it has remained with me and come to my mind numerous times. It has quickly become the cry of my heart. Any time I go through a difficult circumstance or situation there are things I do not see, understand, or comprehend. Things about God and things about myself. Areas of my life begin to resemble a huge jigsaw puzzle with countless missing pieces. I walk with more questions than answers. The pain outweighs the joy. It is then that I realize that if God does not begin to teach me the things I am blind and ignorant to I will be stuck in a place from which I desperately want to escape.

Today was a day of needed revelation. God knows there is an area of profound sadness that continues to house itself within me. He knows I want release and freedom. I have confided in a small handful of people the details of an ongoing heartache. They have listened with compassion and offered healing words of wisdom. I have been reading a book by Sheila Walsh entitled The Heartache No One Sees. It is filled with messages I need at this time. Messages that have come out of her own broken story. I have realized God’s purpose in allowing this particular hurt to come into my life. I have sensed God’s presence and provision to help me go from one day to the next. But I could not understand after all that why the sadness remained. So I asked Him to teach me what I could not see.

His answer stunned me. He let me know the healing of my heart was not going to come from the taking in of more knowledge. It will not instantaneously happen when I finally get the last “puzzle piece” of information. The healing will come from His hands. It will be His doing and it will take time. Just as in surgery and recuperation there is pain involved and felt, so in the lessons and heartaches of life. The fact that I feel pain and sorrow does not mean I am not still on a journey with Him and it does not mean He is not working in me. It simply means I am human. If I am cut I will bleed and if I am deeply hurt I will ache. The deeper the hurt, the more profound will be the healing. The greater the death in an area the more miraculous the resurrection.

Two things I desire above all other things. That I would come through this knowing God in ways I never knew before and ministering to others as a result of my own broken story and places. May it not be in vain and may it not be unprofitable in His kingdom work.

Father, I once again look to You to do in me what I cannot do myself and no one else can do for me. Hold me, help me, and heal me. Amen.

A Death Wish

But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my father. I Kings 19:4 KJV

I am writing today’s devotional with the awareness that some may be reading this who have in fact attempted to take their own lives through suicide. Others are reading it who, like Elijah, have prayed that God would just let them die. Knowing that God created us in His image with a strong desire to live, I am asking myself what it is that causes a person to desire death over life?

For Elijah it was fear. Jezebel had threatened his life and he ran for his life only to sit down and pray the Lord would let him die. For others it may be any number of issues that cause life to seem unbearable. Darkness sets in, reason leaves, confusion abounds, and there does not seem to be a way of escape or even a desire to find the escape.

I have known three distinct times in my life when I voiced such a prayer to God….or at least strongly wished He would just allow my life to end. One time was several years ago when my mother passed away. The ache of losing her engulfed me and there were times while driving I longed for semi trucks to just make their way over to my lane to end it all in one horrific accident. The other time was with the loss of a significant person in my life a year ago. Again, the enormous ache and pain left me with a death wish. I just wanted to stop hurting. Most recently it was during the darkest time of spiritual oppression that I have ever known. I felt isolated from every significant person in my life, questioned my own validity with God, doubted I should even write devotionals, and felt such darkness that again I despaired and wished God would just let me die. The fact that I am writing this devotional today reveals His ways are higher than my ways. Praise Him!

In the first two instances, time was a factor in regaining a desire to live. This most recent time was becoming acutely aware of how involved the enemy was in my life. David said in Psalm 55, “Because of the voice of the enemy…my heart is sore pained within me; and the terrors of death are fallen upon me.” I know now that the dark thoughts, multitude of confusion, and ultimate thought of death were his whispers. But God’s voice spoke louder. He listened the night my constant prayer was, “Jesus, I need You.” He held me when I lacked the strength to hold on to Him. And He revealed to me the true nature of my mindset. I stand in awe of His continual redeeming love!

Father, may I be filled with the fullness of You and live out the rest of my days in Your embrace! Amen.

The One We Turn To

And He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who for eighteen years had had a sickness caused by a spirit; and she was bent double, and could not straighten up at all. Luke 13:10,11

Eighteen years! Think of what your life has been like for the past eighteen years. Now imagine living your life doubled over and unable to stand straight up, walk straight up, or even sit straight up. Looking at the ground and people’s feet instead of at the sky and into their faces. Humiliation would mark your daily existence. All could see your condition and their responses would probably range from pity to disgust.

We are not told the age of this woman so we don’t know how old she was when it happened to her. We are not told the circumstances that lead up to her condition. But we are told a spirit was involved. At some point in her life she was open and vulnerable to this attack and the enemy wasted no time in seeking to destroy her life.

I imagine her internal world was filled with shame, resignation, and hopelessness. She was robbed of more than the ability to stand straight. She was robbed of value, normalcy, comfort, dignity, and all the things we take for granted. How many people would have stayed involved in her life? How many places was she able to go? And yet on the Sabbath day we find her in the synagogue listening to Jesus’ teachings. While some would choose to blame God and turn bitter, this woman is still found in a place of worship.

I wonder how many would read this account and admit they are still affected by something that happened to them many years ago. It might have been brought on by themselves, by a family member, by a stranger, or even by the enemy himself. It may have come through a choice they made or, like Job, it may have happened even in the midst of living right. Consequences of our own choices, other people’s actions, or satanic attacks are not reasons to walk away from God. They are the very reasons we need to draw close to Him and allow Him to redeem what is left. The question is, will we do it?

Father, may nothing in my life cause me to turn away from You, blame You, or distrust You. You are the only One who knows me completely, loves me fully, and can still bring beauty for ashes. Amen.