Soul Healer

Occasionally, I find myself overwhelmed with extreme gratitude for what God has brought me out of and healed me from! I went from an abusive childhood to being married (after college) to a man who ended up being unfaithful and became physically abusive at the very end of our marriage. My spirit was literally broken twice from both abusive environments. Both situations left me feeling hopeless, worthless and broken. I even questioned at times why I was even created in the first place if those who were supposed to love me the most ended up hurting me the worst. I felt that if these people who were closest to me and were family were unloving, then God must not love me either.

However, no matter how bad it got God held his mighty, gracious hand on me all those years and kept me from becoming destroyed as a result. He kept me from turning to bad things to numb my pain, such as drugs, alcohol or the streets. This is a miracle considering that the majority of people who go through what I went through turned to at least one very destructive behavior, which just made things a lot worse for themselves. He also saved me from myself when I wanted nothing more than to end it all.

He had a purpose and a plan for my life when I thought there was no purpose for me even being here. I felt like a mistake. My parents obviously did not want me and neither did my husband. Like Job, I cursed the day I was born and even felt angry at times because I felt that God sat back as I suffered so much while he did nothing to stop what I went through. He could have easily stopped these things from happening and I did not deserve to go through those things, especially when I tried so hard to live right and do the right thing, no matter how hard it was. However, he gave me great strength and endurance to make it through those things intact and stronger than ever before. My walk with the Lord would not be as strong as it is today nor would my faith be what it is today had I not been through those things.

The first thing I always do when I start praying is thank God and praise Him for who he is and what he has done in my life! I also thank him for the blessings he has given me. Then I go into my regular prayer time. Sometimes, I get “stuck” in this time of praise and thankfulness, as I did earlier this week when I became overwhelmed with gratitude for how God healed my broken spirit…twice. It truly is miraculous to think how things turned out in spite of what I have been through and how God is finally using what I went through to help others!

Everything I went through in life was like a bunch of broken pieces of jagged glass that were put together by God and handcrafted into a beautiful mosaic, or as an old piece of cloth sewed together with other old pieces of cloth to form a beautiful quilt. If your life seems like nothing good has come out of it, remember that God sees the big picture. He will fit all the jagged pieces of your life into a beautiful mosaic that will astound you. He promises to finish the good work that he started in you, if you remain faithful to him and place your trust in him.

When I had that moment earlier this week where I was overwhelmed with thankfulness for God healing my broken spirit in the way that he did, he suddenly brought to my mind that in the 23^rd Psalm, it says that “…he restoreth my soul.” Indeed, he does. He will restore your soul too, no matter how broken it is.

Praise God! He is the ultimate Soul Healer! J

The Time is Now!

Not one of us is guaranteed tomorrow. In high school, I lost a friend in a car accident. A young life was snuffed out totally unexpectedly. You hear similar stories every day about somebody who dies unexpectedly from a freak accident or dropping over dead without any warning signs. One of my previous bosses from just a few years ago was found dead last year at age 52 in his car, slumped over. He was a runner and in fairly  good shape. It was shocking, to say the least.

So when I hear someone say, “I want to live life and have fun first” when referring to turning their lives around and “getting right with God,” I have to sadly shake my head. My question to them would be, “Do you want to take that chance, knowing that you may die unexpectedly and go into eternity without God?” That is just like playing Russian roulette.

The critical thing that these people do not know is that there are no second chances after death. Your eternal destination cannot be changed once you die, and that is a very long time to pay the consequences of a bad decision. Many of those who end up eternally in hell will remember with deep regret and sorrow all the times someone witnessed to them and they still decided to reject the truth.

I believe that the Christian life is a LOT of fun! Just because we are committed to Christ and walk the narrow way and according to the Word of the living God does not mean we live a boring, unfulfilled life! Quite the contrary!! When the Lord is in your life, you will experience more peace and joy than you ever imagined, especially when the really difficult storms come along! You will no longer have to fear death because you will know without a doubt where you are headed afterwards.

Although we are saved solely by grace by believing that Jesus is the Son of God and that He died for our sins, paying the penalty of death that we deserved and that he rose again, we live by the standard that God set forth in his Holy Word.  We do not live this way because we “have to live by all the do’s and don’ts in order to go to heaven.” We live by God’s standards because we love the Lord and desire to please him. We are also thankful for all he has done for us. Not only this, but we know that God’s ways are the best ways to live and will actually protect us from a lot of heartache and difficulty we could avoid. We are being made holy, as he is Holy. He desires for us to have a fun, fulfilling, prosperous life and he knows the way to do this is to strive for always doing the right thing.

Sin will get us nowhere. It may be fun for the moment, but the long-term consequences are usually too high a price to pay for a few minutes or hours of pleasure and excitement. Twice in my early 20s, I got really drunk when I went out celebrating with a few friends. Stupid thing to do, I know. The first time, I made a fool of myself in front of my new husband by walking in a stupor and then I threw up out in the parking lot. The second time, I was confined to bed for over 24 hours because I literally could not stand up without being horribly dizzy and throwing up. Needless to say, that was the very last time I drank alcohol!

I found that the deeper my walk with the Lord has become over the years, the better my life has actually gotten and the more fun I have had! This is hard to explain to the world who only sees Christianity as a “boring religion of a bunch of sticks in the mud.” I find it much more fun living in freedom and getting together with my brothers and sisters in Christ with whom I have that common ground of faith, knowing that someday we will spend eternity together in heaven. I will also finally get to meet in person those people whom I have “met” on different social media sites whom I only hear of their God stories and see their pictures for now. I am encouraged by their walk, just as they are encouraged by mine. It will be wonderful to give a hug to and thank in person those brothers and sisters I only got to “know” through cyberspace on this side of heaven.

All of this being said, if you are waiting until later when it most likely will be too late to get saved (become right with God), your later may be too late. Do not let fear or anything else hold you back from coming to know the Lord as your personal savior NOW. I cannot promise it will be an easy road, but it will be MUCH better and a lighter load with the Lord’s help and the help of your brothers and sisters who will lift you up in prayer when you need it.

What are you waiting for? The time is NOW.