Hey everyone!
Sorry we haven't been very good at keeping up on letting you know the lessons we have been learning, but I can assure you we both have been learning many lessons over the past few months that we are trying to grasp hold of and understand so we can hopefully share with you!
With that being said I felt the best way to help myself take a better hold on this new lesson I am embracing in my life was to share it with you. I am sure many if not all of you can relate to just waking up and being in a funk and not knowing where it came from or how to snap out of it. I found myself in this spot the past few days and have been wrestling with myself on trying to get out of it because I have a lot more on my plate to get done and its hard to find motivation when all I consume myself with are these defeating thoughts. I want to share a story with you all that after I went to church this morning I thought of and it brought it all full circle for me. This is one of the difficult things to admit that I am struggling with and allowing others to know I am is even harder-but that is the first step to being truthful and being able to take the step to move forward.
I went to visit my family this summer in VA and one day I was walking to my car in a grocery store parking lot when a random car pulled up behind me and the gentleman inside started to tell me that he had to talk to me. I have watched enough dateline to know maybe this wasn't the smartest thing to stop and have a conversation with this complete stranger but he seemed adamant and I had a feeling that I needed to hear what he had to share. So I made sure to keep my distance but allowed him to share what he felt he needed to tell me. He started off telling me that I had a presence about me and that as he drove by that he felt the Lord telling him to stop. I was definitely skeptical but tried to keep an open mind. He proceeded to tell me that there were a few things he felt were placed on his heart that I needed to hear: 1) I am a strong woman of the Lord however I am even better at putting up a mask that I have it all together when in reality I do not believe in myself as much as others may think. He said my value is more than I give it credit for and that it is time to stop defeating myself constantly and start believing in my worth and my ability; 2) That I am beautiful- not just looks but that I have a beautiful soul and that while people may think I agree that I still see my flaws and faults and that it was time to see myself through different eyes and believe that I am the person the Lord created and sees. After he told me all of this it was almost as if I had built a wall immediately and denied that it was true, I did believe in myself, I did think I was beautiful and had it all together. But now more than ever I can see that every point he made to me that day was true and that mask I place over it is creating more pain and hurt than if I would just let light in and let the Lord take hold and live the life He wrote for me.
'Trusting in anything is sometimes a hard practice to learn and even when it comes to God you can say you do but to feel the unease and worry shows that you simply do not trust Him enough. The strength of that trust is not enough and YOU have to learn how to fully believe He is the light, the way, and all will be right when you let Him lead your life and show you the amazing story He has already written for you.' I wrote that after a prayer this morning before attending church and I know some of you will be skeptical but the service was about Jesus being the light and the way to a better life and every single thing said in the service rang true to what I had wrote down. It was an overwhelming sense of having the Lord be with me and tell me He understood where I was and that He is ready to help me get out of this funk and see it is time to walk out of the dark and live in the light.
This is already a novel and if you are still with me I will try to be concise in my next few points-but I felt that this was something some of you are going through too and I don't want to simply say do this without explaining how it could be applicable to your story. If you want to live a life empowered by God to have hope then you have to start by knowing Jesus and learning about Him. You cannot simply wait to have hope when your problems go away and get better if that's what you are waiting for then you will be waiting a long time and honestly probably won't have that hope until your funeral. Instead have hope in whatever you are going through and fix your eyes on Jesus and thats how you will have hope in this world and all the trials you are going through and will go through.
A lot of us may be putting up the same mask I do and believe He will get me through it all but its time to be honest with yourself and admit that there are parts of our lives that we do not want to let Him shine his light on and we would rather live in the darkness and hold the control because we are afraid to let it be seen. I am sure many of us ask ourselves these questions:
1) How can you really have hope that comes from knowing Christ, if you do not really know Christ? You can't.
2) How can you fix your eyes on someone without ever seeing them? You can't.
3) How can you have the mindset of Christ if you don't know how He thinks? You can't.
4) How can you follow Jesus or anyone else for that matter if you don't know where it is that they want to take you? It's hard.
Follow Him, and get to know Him and that is how you will learn to change the you can't into I just do. Knowing Him can help me learn to trust Him more than I already say I do.
Jesus never gives up on you-its ourselves that give up so easily we accept defeat too quickly and we lack the strength to press on and give in too easily to the darkness. If you'll take Him and walk with Him then He has promised (John 1:15) that the lights will turn on and you will know what life is all about. But you have to understand what it is you are accepting because you can have light but if you do not understand it then you are still in the darkness because you haven't received the light, admitted it, or allowed it into every part of your life. John 1:11
Sometimes we are afraid to let God shine light on parts of our lives, like me and my vulnerability to not having it all together and not believing I can and will get through every obstacle I face. Sometimes the light shines on a part of your life and it makes things awkward or brings out the pain. Think of it as walking outside from a dark room and how you have to adjust your eyes to the amount of light now shining on you. Some of us run back inside or squint or try to block the light with our hands but you have to know you cannot live in the darkness forever. Living a life like that isn't really living a life-you let others down, you miss opportunities, and you won't live the life that you were meant to live. Don't paralyze your life by accepting the dark and living in a life of fear and failures. Hold onto His teachings and you will be set free. John 8:32
If He is who He says He is then don't you think that He can help you and make any situation better? Are you like me and have enough people that don't believe in you that don't like you or gave up on you and expect you to fail and you are afraid He will be added to that list too if you let Him in? Remember this we have a very limited perspective and very limited eye-sight and God loves each of us more than we could ever know and He is the LAST person that would be added to that list.
At our church we have a saying: "Me Too" know that you are not alone we all have some part of our life that needs to be healed and even when others tell you that you should be over it by now you aren't and it still brings pain-Let Jesus shine light and help heal that part with you. Don't be ashamed that the pain still exists-many of us put up the mask to make it seem like we are stronger than we are, we fake others out but God knows your heart and He knows you are weak and shaky-let Him be that strength and shine light on you to help you replace the mask with truth.
I will leave you with this song that brings meaning to all of these lessons: Cornerstone- a cornerstone is the first stone laid in a house, if you get it wrong then the house and everything after it will be wrong so let God be your Cornerstone and you can't go wrong in life no matter which path you take because He will be walking it with you.
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