Band-Aids over bullet holes

Bandaids don’t fix bullet holes, you can only cover up what has hurt you for so long. -Austin Dennis

Yesterday, I took a direct hit.

And boy it hurt.

I couldn’t address the wounding in the exact moment due to my shock, but bandaided myself in a stop gap measure as best i could and carried on.

A bandaid isn’t an effective treatment for a major wound, is it?

As soon as I got some time alone, i ripped off the bandaid, and asked God to pour His healing into the situation.

This morning, I am feeling like the bullet has been removed. But the situation isn’t rectified yet.

You see, I can forgive, but i can’t move on until the shooter has heard what they did.

For me, its not about justice, but honor.

The shooter was someone i respect, a fellow believer.  And when they get stressed out, they sharpshoot before taking a step back to take in the whole situation.

I get it, because my temper flares too.

God and i have spent years working on my giving my anger over to Him, and not responding in the moment it hits. I need to wait for the feelings to simmer so I can hear His voice telling me what to do when i have been hurt.

You’ll note, I am not talking about being offended, but wounded.

If i take offense at what someone does to me, I sharpshoot myself in the process.

If and when i am wounded, whether by a friend or enemy, I am called to forgive.

I am also called to speak up.

Because of my gifting, word wounds are especially hurtful. Some might receive them as a slap, I receive them as a gun shot.

I spent way too much of my life keeping my wounding in from the built up shock after shock, internalizing my pain in the most self destructive ways.

No more. As a daughter of the King, I deserve to treat myself better.

First I run to my Abba, and let His balm, tears & love enfold me in His embrace.

Then I allow Him to treat the wound: to cauterize, stitch, bind together the rawness left from the injury i have received.

I then ask Him to give me His perspective on the situation.  To see what He wants me to do, to speak what He wants me to speak, to forgive as He asks me to.

Finally, only after the previous steps, do i approach the one who wounded me.

Silent no more.

Grounded in who I am, and secure in His embrace, I can speak up with confidence, knowing my Abba is with me, and my voice has value to Him.

If you too are wounded today, draw near to your Abba.

Put on some worship music, get comfy before Him, grab that box of Kleenex, pad of paper & pen, and let it all out.

He will meet you in that pain, and begin the healing you & He are both longing for.

Don’t keep using a bandaid to cover up your hurt.

Allow the Healer to touch you, and make you whole again.

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when words fail

Hearing about how Christians are being persecuted, tortured & killed for their faith hurts.

For we are one body, one bride, one church in Jesus.

And when one part of the body hurts, the whole body feels the pain. Sure, those closest to that part may feel it more intensely, but when the part is removed, the whole body has to readjust and learn to compensate.

God calls us to life down here on earth, in the midst battle over the ground the enemy is trying to conquer as his….each of us.

You see, the enemy doesn’t really want land mass, he wants to rule the masses.

He is jealous for God’s kingdom, and will not stop trying to destroy it until Jesus comes and puts an end to him once and for all.

The enemy knows this, which is why he tries so hard to discourage, stir up dissent, distract & decoy us from Kingdom living.

He thought that if this slaughter of His lambs were made public, he could turn the flock away from the Lamb.

He was wrong.

God’s people begin to pray all the more and share Jesus all the louder when we hear & see His people being taken out.

For where the enemy leaves wounds, God brings healing.

Where hearts are broken, God binds up & makes anew.

Where anguish is the cry, God brings His peace.

These are not just platitudes, but hard earned truths I have experienced in my life.

You see, a few years ago now, my lovely sister in law decided she couldn’t take the burdens she carried any longer, and listened to the enemy’s lie that she was better off dead.

She succeeded.

And almost destroyed her husband, rocked our world & stirred up the mental strongholds the enemy has over a few of the family.

If it hadn’t been for God, there would be no family left. Honestly.

God showed up so powerfully at her funeral, and the gospel was fully shared for all to hear…for she was a believer.  I know, because i witnessed her genuine acceptance of Jesus as she poured out her need for him.

Had I not been there, I couldn’t have reassured her husband and mine that she was in God’s hands.
Not the enemy’s greedy clutches. as he had hoped.

God honors our heart’s cry for Him, even if we wander lost for a season or two in the desert.

The peace that God brought into this situation was beyond capture-able in words. 

He revealed His love and grace, mercy and calm beyond words.

We hardly had words to speak in our grief, but He knew.

So my prayer for all of us in the body who are dealing with traumatic loss, heart break, illness, family chaos, debt?

May you press into His Presence with everything you’ve got.
He will be there when you seek Him.
He will hold you together when you begin to fall apart.
He will never leave your side through the lows.
He will rejoice with you in the highs.
He will lavishly love you every step of the way for the rest of your life.

When words fail, the Word steps in and intercedes.

Because what breaks our hearts matters to Him.
When His children hurt, He hurts. When His children die, He cries for our loss as He gathers them Home.

Our words may fail us in the storms that come, but our Word never will. Ever.

If your heart is heavy, draw near to Him and ask Him to lighten your load.  If your soul is parched, ask Him to quench it with life & hope again. If you hunger for more, He will meet your need.

And if you find yourself facing your ISIS one day, He will more than equip you to stand your ground, and lead you into heaven at His side.

And what about the enemy? He knows his days are numbered, and he knows who will win.

He knows it isn’t him.

One God rules, forever and ever!

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3 ways words pack a wallop

Many of us can recall a time when we were hurt by someone else’s actions.

But we likely all can remember a time when someone’s words hurt.

Words bypass race, size, religion, gender, class and strike right at the heart of us, often before we know it.

There are three ways we can be wounded by words have been wielded as a weapon:

Unintentionally:

Gossip can catch us off guard, and broken telephone can contribute to us being hurt when we hear things behind our backs.  Hearing your BFF actually hates your new dress but tells you how flattering it looks to your face because they know how much you like the color & they don’t want to hurt your feelings… still hurts when you realize they withheld the truth from you when asked for it.

Sometimes we don’t know the other person well enough to not accidentally make a comment slip (like how you dislike Timmy’s coffee and it turns out to be their favorite daily coffee place) and hurt their feelings.

Be careful what you say when you don’t know all the facts or people in a situation. Ask God for wisdom to help you steer clear of unintentionally using words that hurt.

Accusingly:

When we hear an accusation, we are all initially hurt: either by the truth, or by the lie.

The truth can pack quite the wallop when we are hiding from it, can’t it? There have been times when I need to catch my breath from its jab. The point of these words is to rebuild & restore us, despite the surgery that may be involved uprooting what shouldn’t be within us.

Unfortunately, the delivery method can pack as much of a punch as the words spoken.

When God speaks the truth to us, whether in His word or through another follower, it might be blunt but it is to be delivered with love and a desire for God’s best. Not the judgment that tends to slip out, which reveals the state of our own hearts.

Which leads me to the other way that an accusation can hurt: when its a lie.

You know, “lie” is a word I prefer not to use, because I like to lie down to rest, and I don’t like to use words in two ways when I have an options. Lies as a plural, is perfect. As a writer, word choice is important to me for setting the right background or revealing the best picture.

I choose to use the word “falsehood” for two reasons. False is the opposite of Truth, which also shows we are aligning ourselves with the enemy “hood.”

Falsehoods hurt because of their design. They are enemy snipers designed to take us down any way they can. When they are used by a non-Kingdom dweller, we aren’t as surprised, for we know who they are aligning with by association.

When falsehoods are used by a believer, a tear forms in the fabric of the Kingdom, and a tear falls from the face of its Leader.

We are not designed to speak what is false, but:

Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable —if anything is excellent or praiseworthy —think on such things.

Philippians 4:8 NIV

We are not to walk back into the enemy hood we have been delivered out of, but keep the best of the Kingdom on our hearts & in our minds, as the above verse suggests. Even more clear is the comparison seen in the Message version of the same verse below:

Fill your minds and meditate on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.

Philippians 4:8 MSG

Which leads to the last way words can wound us when they are wielded as a weapon:

Deliberately:

This reveals more about the character of the speaker than the hearer.

Deliberately using your words, whether truth or false, shows you have a foot in the enemy hood, whether you would like to hear that or not:

Because you KNOW your word will hurt.

And that knowledge means you purposefully are aiming at another person to wound them.

Not cool.

I have been the recipient of deliberate, calculated falsehood in a time of great loss or shock, from those I adored.

Although I have forgiven them, the scar remains.

Those deliberate words? They are the bombs to the single gun shot of unintention and the Uzi of accusation.

Last Word:

All of these wound causing word weapons can come with a complication. How it impacts our relationship with the speaker of these words.

We need to run to God first to ask Him to separate how we have been hurt from the person who hurt us. Once we have dealt with the wounding, then we need to ask Him how we are to speak to the wounder. He may reveal an insight we could not know, and have us either set up a new boundary or reinforce our friendship, addressing the situation from His perspective.

Words hurt, but in His hands we can be fully healed.

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free to choose

Freedom has been calling out since losing Eden.

With the beginning of work came the lie of self sufficiency.

We can do out all on our own.

And when we fall, over and over, freedom stands nearby, waiting for our word to step in and help us out from the pit we created.

We have to choose freedom.

The Prodigal son choose to go his own way.
His Father waited for his return.
And oh how they celebrated when he returned, having learned a hard lesson as he strayed from what his father taught him, raised him to be.

God wasn’t, isn’t content to sit back and wait for us to return home. No loving father can take their mind off the child who is fast from home and up to who knows what.

Love longs for the one it loves.

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He decided in one holy extravagant outlandish gift to settle the matter once and for all.

Jesus broke through, revealed the love of God up to and beyond His death, and released us from the kingdom of darkness and bondage into the kingdom of heaven.

Heaven. Where love, truth and freedom rule.
24/7, 365 days a year, for eternity.

When we seek freedom, finding it through its Source, heaven reaches down and loosens our shackles.

Who the Son sets free is free indeed.

IS FREE, not will be.
If God has told you that you are free, you are- even if you can’t see any discernable difference.

Is free IN DEED.
Jesus’ selfless act was the deed that sets us free.
He died so we could live free.

Is free INDEED.
The use of the word ‘indeed’ was intentional.
in·deed has two meanings:

1. used to emphasize a statement or response confirming something already suggested.
So your freedom is confirmed, as indeed emphasizes…
And…

2. used to introduce a further and stronger or more surprising point.
Indeed, your freedom is nor only here waiting, but it is complete and finished once and for all because of Jesus.

Freedom ultimately is a choice.
God made His in offering it to us.

The choice is now ours.

Do you want to live free?

Do you want hope right now in the pit you find yourself- whatever it is?

Do you want to be cleaned from the slime of the pit?

Do you have wounds that need binding up?

Freedom is calling.

How will you answer?