Inner Healing: A Process that Leads to a Promise

Where do I even begin? As I sit here overwhelmed about what the last month has looked like for me I am completely in awe of God and His goodness. God has really gotten my mind stirred up about my own life. I am ready to throw up all over this page as I process my inner thoughts and feelings. Just a reminder for y’all, this is going to be raw material and I plan to be pretty vulnerable in this post. I want you to feel like you are in my mind while you read this so here goes nothing.

I walked into this month pretty confident in who I was and feeling pretty solid in my identity. I knew I wanted God to transform me in any way possible. I pretty much walk into everything giving God my open heart and telling Him I want him to move as He pleases. I came into this season with a moldable heart. I have realized that though I thought I was confident in who I am, I am asking God these things for a reason. Probably because I am not very confident in my identity. Or I am allowing the enemy to tell me I have no idea who I am. As I sit and examine my time in Colombia I allowed the enemy to tell me “You aren’t good enough, You don’t know the bible like these people, you don’t even have a relationship with God like these people”. I allowed these three sayings flood my mind this first month. I allowed myself to believe I do not belong here. I allowed myself to believe I was all alone and that nobody else was struggling. I know now that these were the lies from the enemy. In the next few paragraphs I am going to share how these three lies got twisted and I am going to tell you what God says about them.

“You aren’t good enough” is a classic lie the enemy likes to tell me. I am still learning to declare truth about this one. Sometimes (like during this month) I really struggle with this and I become really good at pushing it down. I know what God says about this. He says I do in fact belong here with this team building the Kingdom. I was created good enough because the creator of the world says so to me directly. Psalm 139:14(NIV) says “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” So if scripture aka God’s word says “your works are wonderful” and I am a work of God, then that means I am wonderful? HECK YEAH IT DOES! IT MEANS YOU ARE WONDERFUL TOO! You are a work of God. You too, are good enough whoever needs to hear that God is telling me to write that for you. Believe it is for you and do not let the enemy tell you otherwise! God has created me to love others so well and show them their true value because my whole life I have struggled with my worth and if I was enough. I constantly felt unseen by the people around me. I know now these were lies I was told in highschool/college.  I was made to come on this trip and bring value into kids lives that have never felt that value before. I got to press into some pretty awesome kids and show them Gods love this past month. Jose is one boy that I really got to press into. He is fifteen and he wants to be a photographer and make music. I loved getting to know him and to just be his friend. We did not speak the same language but of course God makes a way for everything. We got to communicate a lot through other people and through google translate. Most of the time we did not even have to say anything. I could tell he just needed someone around. Later on my last day I found out he is a kid that is overlooked a lot in the program. And not to boast on myself but to show you the strategic mind of God, What if I cashed in and decided I was not good enough to be here? Would Jose even have felt seen and noticed and loved? If God brought me here to just show one person their worth in the kingdom, I am completely okay with that. I got to show him he is important and loved and seen. I am good enough because God chose me. He chose me for these moments whether I feel equipt or not. I know He wants to use me and I need to remember that my heart is open. Even when I do not feel like I am, I am. God created me for this trip. He knew the second He made me He would bring me here. I am good enough because I am “fearfully and wonderfully made” and I will continue to remember that the rest of this adventure with God. 

“You don’t know the Bible” and “You don’t even have a relationship with God” are two more lies the enemy loves to tell me. I constantly have the thoughts in my mind that I do not know the words of the Lord or that I do not know His voice. I do know His word and I do hear His voice every single day. I believe God can speak to us in many different ways. There is no special way to hear from him. I struggle to compare myself to lifetime christians or people who have been living life with God longer then me. I have to remind myself of my baby faith. I also have to remember my faith is my faith and my relationship with God will not look like everyone else’s. My relationship with God is unique and special just as your relationship with him is or could be.  Also, God is teaching me His word and He is showing me deeper meaning behind it. I am learning to fully read the bible in color. Though I know little, I read the words and I understand and can apply them to my life. If I know the whole Bible but do not read it with deep meaning, I cannot possibly be wise or have value behind scripture. God has been reminding me and showing me that it is not about how much I know His word it is about how much I know Him. Knowing the Bible front to back but not having any meaning behind it just means I know a lot of information about God. It does not mean I know the Father personally. I can confidently say I have a relationship with God and that I hear His voice. When Jesus died for us, He gave us the Holy Spirit which dwells in us. We get to hear from God because Jesus died for us. He took our place of sin and we are now washed white as snow. We are made pure in the image of God. I know God and His voice. I love the ways God speaks to me.

Dealing with lies from the enemy are so hard and confusing. If I sat here and told you those were my only struggles I would be lying straight through my teeth. I am struggling with other lies and past experiences I did not know hurt me as bad as they did and God keeps reminding me of something that the wisest woman I know, Tia, told me. “You have to go through the process before you get to the promise.” I never truly understood that line until now learning about things I am healing from. Guys, healing is no joke. Let God bring up those gnarly things that happened to you years ago because your ongoing situation is rarely the cause of your ongoing pain. Fran, my squad mentor said that one and it really got me thinking. How many times have I gotten hurt or offended by something recently because of something that hurt me ten years ago. It sounds crazy but it is true. I have been holding on to hurt from when I was eleven years old. It actually makes me laugh when God brings these things up. Quickly, I ask God why that possibly still causes hurt and He gives me a million examples in my life that I have felt rejection or embarrassment because of something all because when I was twelve I felt rejection from a boy. It might sound silly but it is real and it affected both relationships I was in while in high school and college. All this to say, the enemy has such a way of manipulating your mind. I am now getting to go through a process of healing with God from past and present hurts. Eventually I will reach my promise but  for now I am going to lay down my agenda and let God get me there in his timing. I am thankful for God’s process. There is for sure some hurt to come but those hurts will only last a little while. What I mean by this is that healing is messy and it does not always feel good but it is going to help me live a life of freedom with the Lord and that is exactly what I want. 

 I hope reading this you can gain some perspective in your own life and be reminded that there is freedom in laying down your own process and letting God take over your healing. My prayer for all of you is that you meditate on what it is God wants to heal in you and that reading this blog you do not feel alone in walking through hard things. I would love to chat with you and pray for you if healing is what you need and you still are not fully understanding what it looks like to get free from the enemy. I am nowhere near the end of my process and I will not be letting it discourage me. I pray for empowerment and motivation through this blog. Psalm 40:2 says ‘He lifted me from the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” Allow God to pull you up. Allow him to give you a firm place to stand and do not let the enemy tell you the process is too much for you to handle. God has perfect timing. Love ya’ll. Blessings and healing over you! 🙂