the pain of being untangled from lies and deception

If we personally value truth and honesty, we don’t want to have lies as part of our
relationships, situations or any part of our lives. But when we ask God to reveal and expose the lies in our lives- of ourselves and of those around us- it is amazing how painful and heart wrenching it can be.

I have recently come out of a situation where I didn’t know what was truth and what wasn’t and after so much pleading and seeking God about it all, when I was actually shown (and continue to be shown), it is so deeply painful that I have to make sure that I stay so close to God who is the only One able to counsel my heart that deeply.

This has shown me how staying ‘in the dark’ and ignorance can actually be more
comfortable than knowing the truth, which says a lot considering how much pain the insecurity of not knowing truth can cause to the mind, spirit, soul and relationships.

During this process it has been so painful and emotions such as anger, resentment,
pure guttedness, brokenness etc have got to be worked through so that they don’t stick around in my heart. The process to build is so much longer and energy consuming than the act of destroying. It takes only moments to trash a room but so much longer and more effort to get it back right again. And this is even more so with a human heart and spirit.

But one thing that I am grateful for is that God is with us and faithful and true and He would prefer me to go through this pain into freedom and value, rather than stay in a place that is confusing, upsetting, mentally all over the place and just slowly heart tearing. I love that He is unafraid of emotion and pain, and is with us through it all to bring us into freedom and truth more and more. He does not want us to settle for mental mind games and pain, or compromise value. He absolutely values each and every one of us and wants us to be fully unbound.

So I would really love to encourage you that if you desire truth, please do not go back to the comfort of deception when it gets painful and hard going. Keep moving towards full truth where you will find full value. To be healed is a painful process but one that we have a personal responsibility to take. If we don’t and we ignore symptoms of deception, then we will not only stay in low (or high) level pain, but we won’t be able to pave the way for those coming our way and who need help and guidance.

There is a song line that says “if you tolerate this, then your children will be next”. And this is so true. Let us take full responsibility to cut off everything that ties us so that we won’t end up being bound and impact for the worse whoever the ‘children’ are that we are raising.

healing in the obedience

There are many testimonies in the Bible where people have been healed through their acts of obedience. One of them is Naaman who seeked out the man of God, Elisha, for healing. 

If we are honest, probably most of us would be able to relate to his attitude during the process; annoyance that we’ve made the effort to take the journey to meet the ‘healer’ and he doesn’t even bother to come to us himself but sends some ‘random’ to instruct us what to do. And then the instruction is another offence to us- to go to a river- and not even one of the ‘better’ rivers like in our own country!

Naaman has with him gifts and gold to ‘buy’ his healing, but when the instruction for healing is simple and seemingly random and offensive to his mind, time and effort, this challenges the truth of his attitude and heart.

Thank God for those in our lives who are around us to challenge our ego and attitude with clear wisdom and the ability to cut through the crap. Naaman’s servants encouraged him to get over himself and just do it, and he was therefore healed- doing the simple act of a strange and offensive-to-him instruction.

As you read through the Bible and find healings it is interesting how there is instruction. It seems that most of them will have a cost or strange instruction, but not a cost with money that is easier to hand over, but a cost of getting over ourselves, submitting our own ‘intelligence’ to the Highest Authority of all intelligence, the cost of pride as we need to humble ourselves to do what would be ‘beneath’ us.. 

On the other hand, as we are reading about the healings in the Bible, we can also see that every healing is different, with different instruction after bespoke encounters of being healed. This shows that when we pray for healing, there is no formula of instruction. It is purely to obey what God is saying! This can also cause offence to us, cost us what we didn’t want to pay, and mean that we have to ‘get over ourselves’!

Every walk in life with God will cost us our pride and self-importance and mean that we must continually submit our whole selves (desires, expectations, intelligence, attitudes, etc) to God who is the Great Instructor and wants us to join Him on a wild and undomesticated trip!

Let us be servants of the Most High- like the slave girl who first set Naaman off on his journey with simple trust in Truth, and like the ones who went with Naaman were able to respect the instruction and get on with it.

he is missing from me

Instead of saying “I miss you”, the French say “you are missing from me”. I love this description.

While I was in church for a celebration service, we had a lot of guests come and join us. I thought about how these people may have friends and family who
have been praying for them and now they are here it must be such a full-hearted time for them to witness! I felt so happy for them! But at the same time, I was
acutely aware that the ones that I am praying for were still not there and I really felt that “they were missing from us”.

As I felt this sadness and deep sorrow, I thought about how Jesus must feel. He must be so acutely aware of those who have still not yet ‘come home’, and who
are missing from Him.

May we never give up seeking and praying for those who have yet to come home to the Father’s house. There is no-one who doesn’t belong or have a precise fit
in the family of God.

And may we be aware of those who are missing from us, even if it brings feelings of deep pain, so we can persevere and never give up praying for them.