This week we are going through sessions called Pure heart week.. in my words, a no makeup spiritually emotional physically draining tear fest surgery of the heart. It has been......excruciatingly, painfully, and wonderfully freeing. We have been addressing areas in our lives that are and have been in the secret. Those private shameful sins. Also, we have been bringing up un-healed hurts from the past. One's we didn't even know were there God has been revealing. Regrets, fears, abuse, everything...
I've learned that hiddenness is like mushrooms growing in the dark...it will just keep growing unless revealed to the light.
I'm learning that when these painful memories and hurts journey out of us, we feel it because we've ignored it for so long.
Crying over it is good... it brings healing, and let's it out!
Obvious statement: We ALL have sinned.
The definition of sin is to miss the mark. i.e.: like in a bulls eye playing darts.
But the good thing is this: in 1 John 1:7 it says If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we're obviously lying through our teeth—we're not living what we claim. But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God's Son, purges all our sin. (The Message Version)
MORE GOOD THINGS: When we deal with hurt and pain in our lives, we will find greater strength to resist the enemy in those areas that owned us before.
God stops and looks at those with a broken heart..
God spoke to me--
He said He was always there. He was always with me. Even when cruel, painful, and wicked things happened to me. Things I couldn't have helped and things I had pretended was but a dream, a nightmare of one. He says He felt my sorrow, my burdens, my fears, my pain, and my confusion. He was with me in my closet sobbing. On my pillow weeping, crying out. He knew my loneliness and depression. He gave me freedom today. HOW? Because I spoke them out. I acknowledged that I have been hurt, and I let myself feel the hurt. To do this I had to become transparent. This was a painful process of accepting my past and letting myself become un-numb to my feelings. I confessed not only my sins but my hidden hurts to my school leader. She prayed for me, washed my hands and face, and anointed me with oil. I felt his presence immensely washing me clean, both heart and mind.
The outcome? Freedom.
These things are not holding me back. These experiences don't define me. I am not the names I have allowed the enemy to define me as over the past 11 years.
I am clean. I am pure. I am sanctified. I am beautiful. I am a princess. I am loved. I am wanted. I have a purpose. I have a testimony...and I won't be ashamed to claim it.
I am sitting in the prayer room listening to Loft Sessions by Bethel, and I couldn't be more content. It is now 11pm and I came in here over 2 hours ago. Feels like 10 minutes ago. God has given me such pure joy! It must have come with the freedom.
I encourage you...Please.. if there are things you have kept hidden in the dark, let them out. If you don't, they will just build up over time (take it from someone who knows) and eat you away on the inside. But once exposed in the light, they will die out. Confide in someone you trust, or even your parents. I called both my parents today and shared everything with them and I feel so light and free having those things off my chest and in the open. It brought heeling and restoration.
WOAH! God is good. I just want to get up and dance like a child... Maybe I will do just that!
-xxx, goodnight.
