when history repeats…

Sometimes we can say that when history repeats, we have another opportunity to learn; like a test being re-taken. But as my own history is being repeated, I feel like this is not a test, but more like insight to see where there is still very necessary healing needed.

As I am remaking mistakes and thinking about the repeatedness of a situation, when I have considered it as a test to be re-taken, I have lost hope and found that I have wounds that are loud and shouty with painful attitude that stop me even trying to take any test. So then as I have sat and thought about why I am allowing madness a seat in my life, I thought that maybe there are still gaps that need to be filled and not despised and that this is some intel for deeper development and not just for behaviour modification.

Most people know the theory of making better decisions for most situations- if you want to lose weight then exercise and eat less, or if you want to develop a friendship or relationship then you need to spend time and energy… Knowing what to do is not really ever the issue- it is putting into practice what is is we know is best for us.

So if we know that drink and drugs is no good for us (for example), it doesn’t mean that it is simply that we stop drinking and using drugs and that’s it- all sorted. There is a deeper process to go through, otherwise we may end up just be exchanging one issue/need/addiction for another.

In all honesty, I don’t know what to do as it seems too deep and beyond me, but I know that the Word of God is true and that God of the Word is faithful and able to help me. When I don’t know what to do then I need to keep my eyes on Him. It is not a matter of feelings but faith. Both feelings or faith will gather whatever evidence to bring to the table, but feelings are never the best management for life; they have good intel, but are pretty much self-consumed and selfish!

During times like these, it is imperative that we make sure that we are fully open with even one person in our lives so that we can not allow any corners of our hearts and minds to be able to hide in darkness. To have one trusted friend who can love you when you are at your ugliest, is one of the greatest blessings you could ever have in life. May we have that friend and be that friend.

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.

understanding the depth of His love

Last night as I was praying for my nation and my friend’s dad to be healed from cancer, another person that I have been praying for for many years came into my mind. I have prayed for this person daily and pretty much throughout the entire days for a long time, but last night I felt like I had hit a brick wall and had no further faith to pray… or maybe it could’ve been to lack of desire to pray and pray and pray into what seems like a black hole that just absorbs and takes with no end. (Sometimes even we don’t know our true honesty.)

So as my resolve had seemingly dissolved for praying for this person, I thought about how strange that I can pray for other issues that are way beyond one person’s heart and need so much more faith, and how easy it is to pray and contend for matters that are far from us, and yet the things and people that are close seem just far too impossible for God to have any impact.

As I thought this crazy and untrue thought, I realised, not only how hypocritical I am which is bad enough, but also how little I am aware of the depth of Christ’s death and the power of His resurrection. How can I have faith that God can move mountains but not a man’s heart? I had to realign my heart to the Truth that God sent His Son to die and pay a horrendous cost for each and every one- man, woman and child- that has ever lived, is living, and will ever live. If I am beginning to doubt that one man is too difficult then I am possibly saying that I don’t believe that God loves someone enough..??

May we give God access to challenge us and disrupt our farce-like faith and hypocritical living.

He is able.

He is willing. And has done everything needed to reconcile man to Himself.

And He still pursues each and every one.

(The above part of this is not to condemn myself for lack of faith; for we are told that there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. However, we do need to be able to assess honestly our position or be open to God who assesses it for us! Jesus Himself said to His disciples that they lacked faith- when one of them had stepped out to walk on water!! This isn’t His condemnation as this is not who He is. So, maybe He wants us to break out of our limited understanding of what we believe we have the capacity for..?)

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.

the ressurection of lazarus

 Jesus has a plan. (John 11.)

The sisters have their own ideas of what Jesus is able to do (heal before death) and are so gutted when this opportunity passes by without even any sign of Jesus. Although they don’t give up on putting their faith in Him- it just has changed from healing in this life, to the resurrection of the next. 

Jesus weeps. This shows how deeply He’s touched by our heart’s pain. Even though He knows He has a plan that will blow people’s minds, this does not make Him exempt from feeling our pain in the process of what we believe to be loss.

Before the miracle of death unto life, there is an awareness of the stench that will come with it, and yet this isn’t even responded to by Jesus. He just calls forth the miracle of life and tells the sisters and people to take off the outfit of death. This would potentially have been such a nasty job and yet sometimes this is part of our miracles coming forth, that it offends our senses.

Lazarus would then end up dying again and so a miracle isn’t just for the miracle- it is for the hearts of men and women to come to the Light of the world, the Way, the Truth and the Life. For all eternity. Not just here.

Our miracle will also bring with it the fact there will be more determination for others to see us taken out. The prince of the age/world has blinded those who don’t believe and acts of Love and Life will be used to create hatred and persecution.

our responsibility in our own healing

After pain and turmoil in life, we need to ensure that we heal healthily. Most of us will have found that healing is sometimes as painful (if not more) as the actual ‘beating’.

As a follower of Christ I believe in healing and that God is able to heal with immediate effect and we have loads of examples of this in the Bible and from people’s testimonies. I do believe that God can heal inner pain just like that, but I believe more that He takes us through our healing so that we can deal with issues that need to be dealt with to receive and know healing in the most powerful way.

This therefore needs our involvement and our commitment to the process; a process that is painful and difficult. It seems unfair that we have to go through the dark loneliness but I don’t believe that God would ever allow anything that He is not able to bring us into full freedom and full healing.

But we are given an opportunity of whether we want to partner with Him or not. Both will have a painful cost- but one will come with reward and benefit and the other won’t.

responding with power and freedom

As I have been dealing with pain from a certain circumstance, and having to fight against the inner torment and lies of not being good enough, worthwhile, of any value, etc, I am having to lean into Jesus even more than ever.

Not only do I have to do the work of healing from someone else’s tearing down, I have to make sure that I am not becoming hard and cynical in the process.

This feels so unfair and makes me have so much attitude in my prayers to God. But the last few days, God has been making me aware of how He also feels… the pain of constant rejection and misinterpretation of Him, the mocking of Him and people screwing others ‘behind His back’, those who love Him but keep Him a secret and keep Him hidden like He is a nasty secret to be ashamed of..

Just like how we feel, He feels everything a million times over as He loves every single person and has given each one everything He could possibly give, and this is His return..

But He still loves and gives His everything. To every single one of us.

He is still strong in His love and power, patience and mercy.

He is desperate for us to come home to Him and receive His forgiveness and take our place of belonging.

And so this is my example. I am hurt. I am in deep pain and turmoil. But I have God who has greater responses for me to take hold of. (This doesn’t mean that I make myself available to be abused.) It means that I can be healed and work my pain out with God who understands every rejection and pain there is. It means that as I work through this process of forgiving and healing and seeking truth to replace all the lies and deception, then I can heal wholly and not allow the twisted pain to become part who I am. It means that I can reclaim value and worth because that alone can only come from God and no other.

To reclaim ground that has been trashed it will take a lot of work but if we don’t give up then we will reap the reward, as well as those around us who will also benefit from our healing.

It is always easier to trash a place than to put it back together. It only takes a moment to cause a complete trashing and chaotic mess, but incredibly longer to rebuild and clear up. Let us make sure that we break our own chains so that we don’t go about tripping others up with them. And let us also be aware of how we treat others so that others don’t need to heal from our treatment towards them.

Building value back will never be in vain.

how others treat you is not who you are

All of us have relationships and some are not as healthy as others. Some are an obvious unhealthy form and others are a subtle form that is harder to see. But whether they are obvious or not, if they are unhealthy, they will eat away at our value and worth and make us feel worthless, nasty, unlovable, like a freak, ashamed of, undeserving…

Our feelings are important but they are not the truth. But if the environment keeps us enclosed in lies then we will struggle to know how to fight for truth, or even know it exists differently from what we believe.

This could be from any relationship- from a family member to a colleague, friend or partner. But how we are treated by others is who they are. It is not who we are. This is intel about who they are and what they know about relationships and behaviour. And then it gets transferred onto others in their proximity. Unfortunately, with these relationships, or after them, it is others who will then have to deal with these feelings and decide what we am going to believe- the lies of the spirits that had a seat around the table of that relationship, or something more.

How others treat me is not who I am.

How I feel about myself is not who I am.

But how do I know I’m not what they say when all I have is “evidence” of it?

As a believer in Jesus Christ, I am not without inner pain and turmoil. It’s just that God is with me in it. Even when it doesn’t feel like He is.

How we get to know our true value and worth is spending time with the One who loves us and created us. He is the One who knows our design- for purpose and for pleasure.  

No-one can give us our identity like God. He speaks through His word, His creation and not only speaks but demonstrated His love for us by taking all our sin and pain to the cross and dying in our place. He understands all of our pain and wickedness and loves us and wants to heal us into wholeness. His love for us gives Him the authority to speak to us about who He says we are.

He calls us daughter or son. His daughter or son. This is the highest position of identity we could have. And as our Father, He knows who we are. He is not a sugar daddy who will throw money at us but has no interest in our well-being. He is interested in every detail of our heart and life and able to take care of us and make us strong and soft in a world that is weak and hard. He disciplines those He loves and has invested all of Himself for us.

Find out what He says about you and hold to that. This will need to be fought for as we live in a world where even culture will tell us we’re not good enough as who we are..

Let’s find our healing and push against the onslaught of false and poisonous identities that are trying to impose themselves on us.

If we can be who we truly are, then we will be able to bring healing to not only others but also have the authority to speak life to others.

healed way beyond, not halfway!

I have always struggled in my understanding of the healing of the blind man who Jesus healed in two parts. I have always read (from my understanding) that the guy was healed but only in part- to see the men walking as trees, and then Jesus had to heal again to fulfil and complete the healing.

I’ve never understood this as I don’t believe that Jesus makes mistakes, or has half power.. and so I have always pondered what this is about.

Last month I was listening to a preacher talk about how God compares men (and women) as trees.

As I listened I was thinking how true it was- that man is likened to so many different trees in the Bible- oaks of righteousness, palm trees, cedar of lebanon, trees bearing crops/fruit, leaves from trees bringing healing..etc- even the fig tree- it’s all over God’s Word!

So then as I was digesting all of this, the blind guy came to my mind with his healing, and I thought, “wow, maybe Jesus healed him so far the “first” time and his natural sight was bypassed to pure spiritual eyes and vision- seeing men as God sees them. Imagine if Jesus had kept the guy’s healing at this depth!? The guy would truly have seen so much of spiritual vision! But then Jesus reigned it back in to natural sight and the guy saw men as men.

Now my ponderment is wondering if the guy kept his spiritual vision alongside his natural vision.. or if he was as manipulated as we are with what we see around us as being truth etc..

surprised by what was expected

Subtitle should be “oh you of little faith”!!

How often do we pray “in faith” for one thing or the other and yet when it happens, we’re like, “wow! What the heck??!”

I was praying for my treasure to be well but then when he was, I added human wisdom of “making sure he heals completely” by rest and everything you would be doing if he was still ill!!

I was shortly convicted that this isn’t faith!! What I prayed had been granted and now I’m wanting to keep him bedridden??! What a missed (or delayed) opportunity to celebrate God’s goodness!! 

But from God’s Word we can see that we’re not alone as even the disciples who were faithfully praying for Peter’s life were ‘unbelieving’ when he was knocking at their door!!

I think maybe we expect God to answer in His “higher ways that we can’t understand” when actually He also answers quickly, with clarity and in crazy obvious ways!

I love that there is no condemnation when we are bewildered when prayers are answered(!) but I love more that the Spirit of God can teach us and show us this and lead us higher and deeper and still loves us with a smile (and not disdain!).

Let us still pray for God’s impossible answers but let’s not miss the “regular” and undramatic answers to prayer and celebrate it all.

In the wise words of my brother from another mother, my prayer is; “I do believe.  God help my unbelief!“.