Ok, so to review, I asked in my last newsletter, “What do you sense God is drawing you toward?” That’s what we’re discussing here.
The idea that as David Benner writes about…‘becoming whole AND holy’ as a measure of moving forward and a sign of healthy maturity is so intriguing, inspiring, and yet comforting to me.
I had (until about 7 years ago) lived so long denying parts of myself that I was not whole.
Trying to be holy without being whole is challenging to say the least.
In that attempt, I felt the spiritual gangrene creep through me as I tried to maintain the ‘peace’. Literally, a growing feeling of hopelessness and death was moving through my soul, in the crying of ‘peace, peace where there was no peace’. My inside warred with my outside.
So it was time to make a choice.
I had to mentally break from the traditions I had come to know and love which included risking relationships and reputation which were of utmost importance to me (especially since I had no earthly or physical family left).
OR
continue to allow the spiritual creep of death to overtake me every day I continued to do the same thing that was not feeding me.
I chose to examine what was going on. Upon further examination, I realized I had denied whole parts of my humanity in my attempts to follow Christ. My intellect, my emotions, my unique strengths, my values, my passions, and soooooooooo many of my life experiences did not fit what felt like the ‘approved’ Christian way of life.
So as a result, it had become impossible for me to grow into my true identity in Christ thus far. Without embracing my own experience of humanity, how could I become more like Him which is what I felt I was being drawn to? I could not seem to do this without understanding more about what God made me to be.
It became as imperative to me to then begin the study of myself just as it had and has been to study Jesus.
I had so many questions about myself:
What was I good at?
What was I good for?
What was important to me?
What did I believe?
So many questions that had been ignored and thus suppressed by my own harsh judgment of self and feeling of all I should be doing that I was not. All I could see was what I was NOT.
But I could no longer ignore the scriptures that teach:
I am made in the image of God.
I have the mind of Christ.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
I am filled with the same spirit that rose Jesus from the dead.
I am His daughter.
I am a Daughter of the King.
I am Royal and destined to reign with Him.
I am being made perfect.
He has begun a good work in me He will complete.
He has fashioned me for a purpose.
These scriptures screamed to me as if God himself were calling me.
Do you hear it???
And they and He gave me the courage I needed to move forward and pursue WHO this person was He was referring to in the scriptures.
I could go on and on, but all of a sudden, the self-loathing, constant efforts to humble myself with the focus on all I am not, judgment, and how desperately sinful I am, I just could not bear anymore!
It felt like a complete denial of who God made me to be and seemed MORE like an excuse to not be who God created me to be. It felt like all the negative self-talk and external criticism created more imposter syndrome than being totally and completely me. I couldn’t stand it and I felt called out by God to discover, develop and then offer myself in service from the truth of who He made me to be. So what did I do??
I surrendered to God’s call!
So now for the last 10 years, I have been tiptoeing at first, peaking only to begin with and then now wholeheartedly and openly being a student of myself (not a judge) and teaching others to do the same.
Oh my goodness, what I found! His creations really are fearfully and wonderfully made! THAT means YOU!
And your design determines your destiny.
I invite you to join me and several others as we share with you the freedom and spiritual flight available when you truly trust God and decide to learn about who YOU were created to be in our upcoming ReInvent Your Life Training series beginning on Jan. 16th-20th. Click here to register.
For 5 days, we will study you and we will share with you why this makes sense and what you may be able to expect from the findings. And I really think you are going to like what you see. So if you too have come to a place you cannot continue slogging through, then come see for yourself. 5 days just may open your eyes to a whole new you and what is possible for you.
Do you hear the call?
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