Beauty for ashes: receiving emotional healing (8 page)

It requires spiritual maturity to walk through difficulties in faith that God has something good planned for us. But we need to understand that going through is usually the only way out. We need faith, patience, and endurance in order to receive the end result of all that God promises we are to receive. This passage from Hebrews explains:

Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a greatandglorious compensation of reward.

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For you have need of steadfast patienceandendurance, so that you may performandfully accomplish the will of God, and thus receiveandcarry away [and enjoy to the full] what is promised.For still a little while (a very little while), and the Coming

One will come and He will not delay. (Hebrews 10:3537) In Hebrews 6:11 we read: "But we do [strongly and earnestly] desire for each of you to show the same diligenceandsincerity [all the way through] in realizingandenjoying the full assuranceanddevelopment of [your] hope until the end." In Isaiah 43:1-2, the Lord admonishes His people, saying:

Fear not, for I have redeemed you [ransomed you by paying a price instead of leaving you captives]; I have called you by your name; you are Mine.

When you passthroughthe waters, I will be with you, andthroughthe rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walkthroughthe fire, you will not be burnedorscorched, nor will the flame kindle upon you. (Emphasis mine)

David said of the Lord, "Though I walk through the [deep, sunless] valley of the shadow of death, I will fearordread no evil, for You are with me; Your rod [to protect] and Your staff [to guide], they comfort me" (Psalm 23:4).

Often a person who is rooted in abuse ends up with strongholds in his mind and flesh that must be allowed to pass through the valley of the shadow of death if those strongholds are ever to be pulled down and destroyed.

Paul explains that we war against the enemy by capturing our thoughts that do not line up with what Christ said, and

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bringing them into subjection to what the Word says and believe:For though we walk (live) in the flesh, we are not carrying on our warfare according to the fleshandusing mere human weapons.

For the weapons of our warfare are not physical [weapons of flesh and blood], but they are mighty before God for the overthrowanddestruction of strongholds,

[Inasmuch as we] refute argumentsandtheoriesandreasonings and every proudandlofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thoughtandpurpose away captive into the obedience of Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One). (2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

For example, as a result of having been abused for so long, I developed an independent personality. I did not trust anyone. Early in life I came to the conclusion that if I took care of myself and never asked anyone for anything, then I would get hurt less. As the Lord began to reveal to me that my independent attitude was not scriptural, I had to "walk through the valley of the shadow of death." In other words, I had to let that old nature (part of the old Joyce) go to the cross and die.

The temptation is to run away from our problems, but the Lord says that we are to go through them. The good news is that He has promised that we will never have to go through them alone. He will always be there to help us in every way. He has said to us, "Fear not, for I am with you."

It is in going through things with the Lord that our faith is built up in Him. I love the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego found in Daniel, chapter 3. The king had warned them to bow down and worship him or he would throw them into a fiery furnace.

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They said, "Well, if God can deliver us, He will, but even if He does not deliver us, we will not bow and worship you." They knew that God was capable of delivering them, but if that was not His plan, they were still going to keep their integrity before the Lord and not give up serving Him. We all need to commit to serving God with that determination.So the three men were thrown into the furnace, and the king turned up the heat seven times hotter than it was before. This reminds me of those times when we make the right decision, but it seems that our troubles multiply.

I like this story, because it says that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were bound and thrown into the fire, but that when the king looked into the fire, they were loosed. Sometimes we go into problems all bound, but it is in the problem, going through things, that we get loosed and delivered. The king saw a fourth man in the fire with them-remember Jesus said, "Fear not, for I am with you."

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were brought out, they did not even smell like smoke. I relate to these men, because the devil tried to destroy me. I went through so much pain from the abuse in my life, and when I tried to get free from it I found more pain that I could not understand. Then God showed me how we go through things that put us in bondage, but we have to go through the same things to get back out.

When we begin our journey to wholeness with the Lord, we are usually all knotted up inside with fear. Fear is the enemy of confidence. People can be afraid of many things, of driving cars, of being alone, and of some deep-seated phobias.

I think of F.E.A.R. as False Evidence Appearing Real. If the devil can frighten us, then we are putting more faith in what he says than in what God says. It is one thing to feel fear, but fear will control us if we do not stand our ground and face our fears.

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A woman was sharing how fear was keeping her from doing things that she needed to do. So her friend said, "Well, do it afraid." That was life-changing advice for me. Sometimes we have to face our fears and just "do it afraid."As we allow God to do so, He begins to straighten up our lives by untying "one knot of fear at a time." He helps us go through hard things and discover that His promises are true. We cannot spend our lives running away from everything we fear.

Some people are so afraid of elevators they will turn down a job that is located on an upper floor of a building. If they want the job, they need to get on that elevator, pray, go up a few floors, get off, breathe, and repeat the process until they overcome their fear. We need to overcome our fears that keep us from carrying out God's perfect will for our lives.

The Bible is full of scriptures that say, "Fear not," because God knew that Satan was going to try to use fear to keep His people from fulfilling their destiny in Him.

To some of His first disciples Jesus said, "I am the Way, follow Me." When you decide to follow Jesus, you will soon learn that He never turns back in fear. His path is always straightforward to the finish line. Do not be like the woman in my prayer line who always gave up halfway through the race. As difficult as it may be, decide to stay in the race and see it through!

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Let Go of the PastI encourage people to let go of their past, but never to run from it. The only way to gain victory over the pain of our past is to let God walk us back through that doorway of pain and into victory. No one can achieve victory for us; we have to work out our own salvation. Paul explained this truth in his letter to the Philippian church, saying:

Therefore, my dear ones . . . work out (cultivate, carry out to the goal, and fully complete) your own salvation with reverenceandawe and trembling (self-distrust, with serious caution, tenderness of conscience, watchfulness against temptation, timidly shrinking from whatever might offend God and discredit the name of Christ).

[Not in your own strength] for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you [energizing and creating in you the power and desire], both to will and to work for His good pleasureandsatisfactionanddelight. (Philippians 2:12, 13)

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We have to let God take us through things, and let Him work in us so our mess becomes our message. Difficult things that we have endured in our past prepare us for God's blessings in our future.Even Jesus had a time of training for His future. Hebrews 5:8-9 says, "Although He was a Son, He learned [active, special] obedience through what He suffered and, [His completed experience] making Him perfectly [equipped], He became the AuthorandSource of eternal salvation to all those who give heedandobey Him."

There was a period in the life of Jesus in which we are told nothing about what was happening to Him. During this time we know that He wasgrowing.We too have times of growth that we may not be able to talk about to anyone. It is an intimate time of growth that we must endure. There may be things going on inside of us that we do not understand. But when we finally arrive at the place God wants to bring us, we will see how our past prepared us for what God wanted for us all along.

I like the story about the couple who went into an antique shop one day and found a beautiful teacup sitting on a shelf. They took it off the shelf, so they could look at it more closely, and said, "We really want to buy this gorgeous cup."

All of the sudden, the teacup began to talk, saying, "I wasn't always like this. There was a time when I was just a cold, hard, colorless lump of clay. One day my master picked me up and said, I could do something with this.' Then he started to pat me, and roll me, and change my shape.

"I said, 'What are you doing? That hurts. I don't know if I want to look like this! Stop!' But he said, 'Not yet.'

"Then he put me on a wheel and began to spin me around and around and around, until I screamed, 'Let me off, I am getting dizzy!' 'Not yet,' he said.

"Then he shaped me into a cup and put me in a hot oven. I

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cried, 'Let me out! It's hot in here, I am suffocating.' But he just looked at me through that little glass window and smiled and said, 'Not yet.'"When he took me out, I thought his work on me was over, but then he started to paint me. I couldn't believe what he did next. He put me back into the oven, and I said, 'You have to believe me, I can't stand this! Please let me out!' But he said, 'Not yet.'

"Finally, he took me out of the oven and set me up on a shelf where I thought he had forgotten me. Then one day he took me off the shelf and held me before a mirror. I couldn't believe my eyes, I had become a beautiful teacup that everyone wants to buy."

Submit to the Potter's Hands

God has an awesome plan for our lives, and sometimes He starts changing things so fast that we feel dizzy and disoriented, like a lump of clay on a potter's wheel. But we have to trust that He is working out what is best for us (see Romans 8:28). We need to just go with the flow and let Him make us into something beautiful. Isaiah understood this process when he wrote, "You have hidden Your face from us . . . Yet, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our Potter, and we all are the work of Your hand" (Isaiah 64:7-8).

To live a victorious Christian life, we have to be willing to let go of the past, die to self, forgive those who have hurt us, and let God take us on to the place of promised blessings that He has prepared for us. No one can promise that everything we want to be different in our lives will be changed into what we want it to be. Some things may never change the way we want them to, but God can change us so much that we will not care.

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Our comfort has to be in Christ. We need to forget about what others think about us, or what people have done to us in the past. We are to keep our attention on what God wants to do in us, and with us, and for us now. Paul wrote, "For in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).Letting go of the past involves looking to the future in a new way. In Galatians 2:20, Paul offers us a promise that we, who need to let go of past hurts, can now confess: "I have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me."

We need to learn to be satisfied by being in God's will. The more we focus on who we are in Christ, the less it matters who we were in the past, or even what has happened to us. Paul said, "I count everything as loss compared to the possession of the priceless privilege (the overwhelming preciousness, the surpassing worth, and supreme advantage) of knowing Christ Jesus my Lordandof progressively becoming more deeplyandintimately acquainted with Him [of perceiving and recognizing and understanding Him more fully and clearly]" (Philippians 3:8).

He added, "[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness even] to His death, [in the hope] that if possible I may attain to the [spiritual and moral] resurrection [that lifts me] out

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from among the dead [even while in the body]" (Philippians 3:10-11).There are deep places to discover in God, and there are deep places in us that only God can fill. We need to understand the power of God's resurrection, power that can lift us out from among the dead even while we live in the body. Just as the eagle rests its wings on the currents of the air to lift itself above the clouds, Christ will lift us above the storms of our lives.

We may have a goal to move toward perfection, but we will never arrive at that state until Jesus comes again. We are to accept ourselves, love ourselves, and enjoy the journey because we know God is working on our future all of the time.