Years of pain was healed in one touch.

I was reading during my personal devotion the other day about the woman with the issue of blood.

It’s so easy to put this space between us and them, like they are fictional characters but they lived and breathed. In the Matthew account there are only three verses used to tell her story, but for the first time I saw myself in those three verses.

Matthew 9:20-22 “And, behold, a woman, which was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years, came behind him, and touched the hem of his garment: For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment I shall be made whole. But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.” (KJV)

Because of the kind of disease she had, she was considered unclean. So she suffered silently and alone for twelve years. The same story is told over in Mark 5:25-34, there it tells of how she had tried everything searching for healing, she exhausted all her resources but no healing was ever found.

I thought how many times have I felt like this woman? How many times have I searched elsewhere for my healing? How many times have I felt too weak to push through the things keeping me from getting to Jesus? “The crowd”

I remember praying at times, “God if I can just get to you, just get ahold of you then I know everything will be ok.” I had to get to the place where I was desperate for him, nothing else would satisfy. I had to touch Jesus!

“For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.” Matthew 9:21 (KJV)

I don’t think I ever realized before what really happened that day. One touch was all it took to heal years of suffering! If I only had half the faith she did. She didn’t care what people might have thought of her, she didn’t care if people stared. She was on a mission, she had to get to the healer!

When she FINALLY got to Jesus, it caused him to stop and turn around to her. It didn’t matter the size of the crowd calling out his name. There is something special about touching Jesus. It causes him to stop and turn to you. Anyone can stand and call out the name of Jesus for healing, but only the truly desperate will crawl till they reach the healer! To be so desperate for Jesus that you feel like, ” I must get to Jesus, lest I die.”

The Bible says in Jeremiah 9:13

“And ye shall seek me, and ye shall find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.” (KJV)

Just because no one else may have been able to see her disease or the wounds she carried, doesn’t mean she didn’t have any. There are some wounds that only you and Jesus see. It didn’t say he healed her disease, it says he made her whole. He went beyond the surface problem. Maybe she carried years of shame and feeling like a outcast because back in those days, the disease she had with “the issue of blood” made her unclean in the eyes of the world. She was rejected. I wonder if it made her feel like a throw away?

“He healeth the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.” Psalm 147:3 (KJV)

Years of pain was healed in one touch!

One thing is for sure. No matter the pain, no matter the disease, no matter the wound. One touch from Jesus and we are made whole!

Jesus didn’t just heal her and walk away, but he stopped to comfort her (Vs. 22) He is our comforter, healer, redeemer and savior! Everything that I have ever searched for, is found in him alone.

Jesus sees, Jesus comforts and Jesus heals!

My soul waiteth for the Lord!

Psalm 130:5-6, “I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that wait for the morning: I say, more than they that wait for the morning.” (KJV)

Lately God has been trying to teach me to wait on him. In my eyes I want things to be over with already. I want healing from the past. I want this person to make right what he has done wrong, I want him to get right with God. I want him to ask for my forgiveness, I want him to be able to own up to what he has done. During the meeting he wouldn’t confess, he denied instead.

After the meeting I really struggled with not falling back into old habits and I was fighting thoughts from the enemy again. I had always been told that “the truth will set you free” but I felt like it did the complete opposite for me. I felt like the truth just made everything worse. That now I was out in the open and I felt exposed and ashamed. I wasn’t set free, I was still bound by what happened. I really had to pray that God would help me to lean on him for strength.

This past Friday night, it was like the enemy was beating me up from every angle. I called someone crying. I told them that I was never going to pray about this anymore, that I was done. God wasn’t answering me. When you are in a spiritual battle, at times you can even feel physically weak, like you have no strength left to fight. That’s how I felt Friday night. They began to encourage me, that God hadn’t forsaken me and he hears my cries. That even though we may go through the fire, he is always with us, just like the three Hebrew children. They reminded me that sometimes we have to wait on God to move. He sees a greater purpose that I can’t see right now!

We talked till almost two in the morning and something began to change inside of me. I began to see what I was doing! It was like I had been grabbing Jesus by the hand and was trying to pull him around. I wanted God to move right then and to move only how I wanted him to. But only God knows the end from the beginning, he already knows what’s best for me. That night I had to truly give it to God, I had to just trust him that he would take care of everything!

God has a way of taking these things that the devil throws at us and turning them around for the glory of God! One day there is going to be a person going through what I was going through that night and I’m going to be able to encourage them, just like I was encouraged. As hard as it is to wait on the Lord at times, I know in the end it’s not something that I am going to regret doing!!

I pray that one day this person will be able to confess to the sin the have committed and get it right before God, so one day I will be able to see this person in heaven. I don’t want to allow this stuff to keep me from heaven, but to draw me closer to the one in heaven!

So until I see God move and work this out, my soul will wait on the Lord!

Psalm 40:1-3, I WAITED patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.” (KJV)

Peace, Peace, Wonderful Peace!

Peace, peace, wonderful peace,
Coming down from the Father above!
Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray
In fathomless billows of love!

Tonight is one of those nights where I just needed some peace. Tomorrow one of my abuser’s is going to be confronted and if things go well, I’m going to meet with him too. To be honest, I’m very scared I don’t know what the outcome will be. I need the kind of peace that only the prince of peace can give. I’ve haven’t even been able to eat today, I tried to eat something tonight but got sick and threw it up (that might be TMI) There is a lot of uneasiness inside of me.

I knelt down beside my bed to pray. I was telling God, “I know what your words says, that your strength is made perfect in our weaknesses and that you are a strong tower that we can run into and be safe. That your word says you will not put more on us then we can bare.” I had to remind myself who God is!

Isaiah 26:3-4 “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.” (KJV)

When things are out of our hands and we have no control, the only thing we can do is place them in the hands of our Heavenly Father we have no need to fear. One thing I have to keep reminding myself is he knows the end from the beginning, he knew before the foundations of the world that tomorrow would come and he knew that tonight I would sitting here worrying over something I can’t control. Afraid because I don’t how things are going to turn out, or if they ever be the same again, or if something good will ever come out of this?

I know this fear is nothing more then the enemy attacking my mind, trying to steal any peace I might have.

2 Timothy 1:7 says, For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” (KJV)

Tomorrow I’m going to need that spirit of love, power and especially a sound mind when I see him. It’s not that I don’t love him, I’ve even called him and told him I’ve forgiven him. There is still a chance that tomorrow he will deny ever doing anything and I am going to need the spirit of love to help me. I have prayed many times that God would put in me his love for them, that I would see them as he sees them… lost and in need of a savior… so that way I could love them like he loves them.

I want the same kind of love that Jesus had when he was on the cross, even though the crowd stood mocking him, he still said “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” For the longest time that verse confused me, they knew exactly what they were doing, they were killing him. But they didn’t know to whom they were doing those things to…the Son of God! I use to think God I could never say that “forgive them for thy know not what they do” because they do know exactly what they’ve done, but they didn’t know who they were doing it to…a daughter of God.

On my own or in my flesh I don’t think I would have ever been able to forgive them, but I’ve been saved -adopted- God’s blood now covers me and it’s the same blood that made it possible for Jesus to forgive those “hood rats” even while they were still mocking him. It’s the same blood that has now made it possible for me to forgive them also. That doesn’t mean that I have to let myself get close to them or trust them, I can still keep my distance and be safe and forgive them at the same time.

I thank the Lord that after praying tonight I felt a peace come over me, not a peace that everything will be ok but a peace that even if things aren’t ok tomorrow it’s out of my hands, it’s now in his and that’s safest place for it to be! I have a peace that passes all understanding (because even I don’t understand it!) but I have to just trust the prince of peace!

Was it my fault?

I had the weirdest dream last night. One that made me wake up thinking “What?”

In the dream I was in this room with a bunch of strangers. They were all sitting around just talking, for some reason I laid down on my back on the floor with other people that had laid down. Out of no where this guy comes over to me and gets on top of me, I try to push him off of me but he’s too strong. He holds my hands down and starts kissing me. The dream was so real I could feel his body weight on me, I could even feel his breath on my face! I could hear him breathing and I can’t stand that sound. This goes on for what seems like forever! I turn my head so he would kiss my neck not my lips. In the dream I felt so guilty about that because it made me feel like I had a say in what he was doing…if that makes sense? He stops and just stares at me, I know I’ve seen this guy before somewhere maybe even in real life! I just can’t remember his name. He knows I know him, and that gives him some kind of power over me because he knows I won’t say anything. He reached into my pants, I finally found enough strength to push him off of me. Once it was over with I thought in the dream “This is my fault, I should have never laid down.” Then I wake up from the dream.

Even after I woke up I still thought it was my fault because I shouldn’t have laid down, I made myself vulnerable. I realize it was just some stupid dream but it troubled me that I would still think that it was my fault that this guy jumped on me. Then I remembered all the times I’ve felt that some of the abuse I endured was my fault, because of that I still sometimes feel like I can’t get angry or upset over some of the things done to me. It probably sounds completely insane to people looking from the outside in. There were times when my sister and I were at this house alone with one of those that hurt me. I would lock my sister out of the house so he wouldn’t hurt her, he would abuse me instead. I still carry this guilt that I was asking for it, that I can’t let what he did to me during those times upset me because I put myself there and made myself vulnerable.        “I was asking for it” To this day she still thinks I was just being mean to her because I wouldn’t let her “play” with us. I asked her a couple months ago if she remembered all the times I locked her outside, she did and she said “You were such a mean sister to me” It felt like my heart broke a little when she said that. All I could think was “If you only knew I did it because I loved you.”  I don’t think I will ever tell her the truth about that. I don’t want her to carry a guilt about something she had no control over.

There were other times with the other person that made me feel like it was also my fault. I still to this day catch myself torturing myself over ” If only I had…” or “Why didn’t you just say something” or ” You let him do it because you kept quiet” He never once told me not to tell, I guess he knew me enough to know I was the silent type. Guess he was right.

There is one person that knows my story, he is the only one who has ever told me that it wasn’t my fault. Part of me wants to believe him but the other part just thinks “If you were me then you would know those times were my fault.”

I want to put all the blame where it belongs, but I can’t seem to do that. There are some things I’m afraid to tell because I don’t want my family to think that I let all these things happen. I think in my mind it’s easier to just believe that it’s my fault because if I say it’s my fault then that means I could have stopped it but I didn’t. In a strange way that gives me control over what happened like I had a say even if I didn’t. Maybe one day I will believe that it wasn’t my fault, but that day is not today…

He sees beauty in the brokenness!

I once had someone tell me that

“God is a God that takes brokenness and turns it into beauty.” 

I’ve heard people say things like that all my life, but it never really hit home till I heard this person say it. I couldn’t imagine how God could take any part of my life and turn it into something of beauty. My life had been shattered into so many little pieces that in my mind it was impossible for even God to find all the pieces and put them back together again. If by chance he could find all the pieces that are broken and he tried to put them back together, it would never be the same again.

In my mind I couldn’t be fixed. I felt like God should just move on and try to help someone else who could be repaired. I don’t think I wanted to be fixed, just thrown away.

God doesn’t just turn brokenness into beauty, but he sees beauty in the brokenness!

God has this amazing ability to look at us and the mess our lives are and see beyond all that into what we can be once we give him the broken pieces!

I guess because when we reach the place of true brokenness, only then can we say, “God I can’t fix myself, I’ve tried, and I’ve failed. Please fix me!” He says, “Finally, now she is ready. My child, I will mend you.”

He takes the ugly and odd shapes, with his touch they begin to form into something new, something beautiful. But broken pieces even when they are arranged into a beautiful design, are still broken. The slightest move and they will shatter right back to the mess they came from. They need to be bound together with something strong enough that the wind and rain won’t destroy it. Something that can come between every little piece and hold it together. So God puts himself right in the middle, because only he is strong enough to hold us together! it’s like one day it clicked to me why brokenness is so attractive to God, because only in the brokenness do we let God truly become the very thing that holds us together. We fall apart when we try to do what only God can do!

When God is finished we are no longer broken! But we’re also never the same, in the middle of what use to just be “us” is God “the grout” he is what holds us together. Just like a mosaic we are now stronger after having been broken and repaired by the hands of the greatest artist of all time! The same artist that paints the sky every night and spoke galaxies into existence, is the same artist that cares enough to lovingly put us back together and make us whole again.

I want God to take the brokenness in my life and turn it into something beautiful. I want him to be the “grout” in my life, the center of everything, the one who holds me together!

(My name starts with J so I thought the picture was perfect!)   😉