Jesus Messiah

Jesus Messiah,
name above all names
Blessed redeemer,
Emmanuel

The rescue for sinners, the ransom from Heaven

Jesus Messiah, Lord of all

His body the bread, his blood the wine

Broken and poured out all for love

The whole earth trembled, and the veil was torn

Love so amazing, love so amazing

Jesus Messiah,

name above all names

Blessed redeemer,

Emmanuel

The rescue for sinners, the ransom from Heaven

Jesus Messiah, Lord of all All

All my hope is in You, all my hope is in You All the glory to You, God,

the light of the world

Jesus Messiah,

name above all names

Blessed redeemer,

Emmanuel

The rescue for sinners, the ransom from Heaven

Jesus Messiah, Lord of all

- Chris Tomlin, Jesus Messiah

But, I will remember you.
My soul will ever praise you and remember the works of your hands.
You have not forgotten to me and are near.
You are faithful and you are good.
Never failing and always true.
My heart can only say thank you.
Thank you for who you are and giving me life.

For your goodness, for your mercy, for your sovereignty, awesome God.

Bless the Lord, oh my soul, bless the Lord.

Shattered Security::The Wounded Heart::3

The choice to mistrust God

"… What does the trauma of abuse do to the human heart? What is the damage of abuse?

Simply, abuse provides the raw data that seems to prove that God is not good.

The victim reasons that God is like her abusive father or her preoccupied mothers (since children are designed to learn their earliest lessons about God from their parents). Or, the victim determines that God is someone who looked the other way while a cousin molested her.

The conclusion: Trust is foolish; therefore I am compelled to live my life independent of God’s will. My experiences seems directly to contract God’s promise to provide for and protect my soul, so I am excused from the weighty demands of holiness and justified in failing to reflect God’s glory in my life.

The tragedy of abuse is manifold, but one singular tragedy is that abuse victims so often find themselves repeating patterns and reentering relationship where they are violated in ways that replay dimensions of the past abuse.

The new harm only intensifies their resolve to flee to their own sources of strength and defense. The consequence is loss and sorrow for them and others. But even worse, they have cut off their heart from a passion for God’s glory.

This lack of passion for God may not be obvious. They may be militantly atheistic or coolly agnostic, or equally, they may be devout in practicing Christian duties and promoting Christian doctrine. They may even desperately want to believe in a God who is trustworthy. But until they confront the choices they have made in response to their abuse, neither duty nor their desperation will lead them to genuine passion for the God who actually exists.

Their passion (if they have any passion at all) will be for a distorted god, a god who is largely an idol of their own imagination.

When we fail to trust the real God, we do not escape trusting someone or something.

Trust, like breathing, and indeed, like worship, is inevitable. It is not that some people trust, some worship, some breathe, and others do not. We cannot fail to trust God without turning our trust to something that becomes a new god for us.

When an abuse experience cuts to the core of the heart, the victim more easily turns away from God, or trivializes the abuse and reduces trust to manageable, dutiful levels. Either way, she turns to gods that are not God.

The core problem, then, is not abuse itself, but the sinful energy to trust what is not worthy of her heart.

Is that true for only the abuse victim? Of course not; the proclivity to turn from God to trust idols is deeply embedded in the human condition from birth. Consequently, the root problem and cure for an abuse victim is essentially no different for any other sinner.

Some readers will be appalled by the suggestion that the five-year-old raped by her father is sinful for concluding that God is untrustworthy. Understand: I do not think that any five-year-old other than the sinless Jesus could be so abused and continue to trust God fully. The abused, wounded, victimized child makes the same choice any child would make in the same situation. I made the same choice, many times over, as a child. But it is a choice colored by sin, and as the child grows into adulthood, that tragic choice will continue to haunt her.

Though every human heart is included to idolatry (to trust other gods to provide us with life), the abuse victim will struggle more deeply to trust God with her life and relationships.

No victim is responsible for having been abused. But abuse does provide strong reasons, potent stories, to ask “Where was God? Does He love me? Can I trust Him? If I can, what am I to trust Him for?” The devilishness of abuse is that it does Satan’s work of deceiving children about God’s true nature and encouraging them to mistrust Him. Fearing to trust God, the abuse victim will naturally choose other gods to provide her with life, whether alcohol, promiscuity, or approval seeking.

The abuse victim’s fundamental enemy, then, is sin: the fearful refusal to trust a God about whom she is deceived. The Spirit of God is hard at work in her to reveal God’s true nature and confront her fear and mistrust, but His work is a battle that requires her cooperation."

- Excerpt from The Wounded Heart, Dr. Dan Allender (MDiv, PhD) serves as a professor of counseling psychology and president at Mars Hill Graduate School. He travels and speaks extensively to present his unique perspective on sexual abuse recovery, love and forgiveness, worship, and other related topics.

The Quest for a Cure::The Wounded Heart::2

"AN OBVIOUS ANSWER IS TO OFFER HOPE to those who have experienced sexual abuse and guidance to those who work with abuse victims. One of the central messages of most books on abuse, this one included, is freedom from guilt of the past abuse. What occurred is not your fault!

Unfortunately, that message is at first heard as good news but often does not endure over time.

This fading does not invalidate the good news. It simply implies that more must be done than affirm abused people and implore them to forgive themselves.

What is the enemy? What are the factors that make past sexual abuse so shameful and the basis of such grievous self-contempt?

The answer involves a strategy that seems to intensify the problem: peer deeply into the wounded heart. The first great enemy to lasting change is the propensity to turn our eyes away from the wound and pretend things are find. The work of restoration cannot begin until a problem is fully faced.

This book is about damage, the damage done to the soul by sexual abuse. It is also a book about hope, but hope that loves only after the harm of abuse has been faced…

There is a natural reluctance to face the problem. Christians seem to despise reality.

We tend to be squeamish when looking at the destructive effects of sin. It is unpleasant to face the consequences of sin—our own and others. To do so seems to discount the finished and sufficient work of our Savior. And so we pretend we’re fine, when, in fact, we know that something is troubling our soul…

The unbelieving culture is not so dishonest.

Our society faces realities that other eras chose to avoid. Unfortunately, however, it offers solutions that lead to even greater denial. The secular path for change seems to involve some form of self-assertion, setting one’s own boundaries and choosing to act on the basis of one’s own personal value system. Invariably, the result is a strong, more self-centered humanist, who lives less for the sake of loving others than for his perceived advantage and benefits.

The solution the secular path offers is in fact filling a leaky cup with luke-warm water.

It leaves the soul empty and unsatisfied.

It never admits that the deepest damage is never what someone has done to me but what I have done regarding the Creator of the universe.

The damage done through abuse is awful and heinous, but minor compared to the dynamics that distort the victim’s relationship with God and rob her of the joy of loving and being loved by others.

This process is the end of secular solutions, but many so-called Christian alternatives are even worse. Several paths offered to the abuse victim often increase the burden and lead to revictimization: denial-based forgiveness, pressured demands to love, and quick relief from pain through dramatic spiritual interventions….

(it goes into these three in great detail, which I may later expound upon but for now…)

THE BETTER PATH

The argument of this book is that the best path is through the valley of the shadow of death. The crags of doubt and the valleys of despair offer a proving ground of God that no other terrain can provide. God does show Himself faithful; but the geography is often desert-dry and mountainous-demanding, to the point that the path seems too dangerous to face the journey ahead…

The journey involves bringing our wounded heart before God, a heart that is full of rage, overwhelmed with doubt, bloodied but unbroken, rebellious, stained, and lonely. It does not seem possible that anyone can handle, let alone embrace, our wounded and sinful heart. But the path involves the risk of putting into words the condition of our inner being and placing those words before God for His response. The Lord has promised He will not put out the smoldering flax or break the broken reed (see Isaiah 42:3).

But promises have been made before by a supposedly trustworthy person, and we swore betrayal was the last we would ever allow our soul to experience. The obstacle to life is the conviction that God will damage and destroy us. The problem is that the path does involved His hurting us, but only in order to heal us.

Why does abuse make it so hard to come to the Lord for the succor and life that our souls crave?
What is the enemy to the healing process? In brief, the answer is shame and contempt.

The damage of past abuse sets in motion a complex scheme of self-protective defenses that operate largely outside of our awareness, guiding our interactions with others, determining the spouse we select, the jobs we pursue, the theologies we embrace, and the fabric of our entire lives."

- Excerpt from The Wounded Heart, Dr. Dan Allender (MDiv, PhD) serves as a professor of counseling psychology and president at Mars Hill Graduate School. He travels and speaks extensively to present his unique perspective on sexual abuse recovery, love and forgiveness, worship, and other related topics.

Soul Repair::The Wounded Heart::1

I've been on a journey the last month that has forced me to surrender my spiritual growth, my recovery process and even my pursuing more of who God is, to God.

Ultimately, I am not in charge of these things. I want to be, but I am not. The Spirit has been leading me into darker recesses of my heart and places I have hoped where not there, but this journey so far has been drawing me deeper into the heart of God and allowed me to take ownership of my own and current sin in regards to my past. The thing is why current sin, the longer you are following Christ, the more deceptive Satan's schemes become. The sin now is more subtle, it is a more subtle form of idolatry that many wouldn't even recognize as harmful.

This book has surfaced in numerous conversations with some of the women mentoring me and it has been completely transforming my perceptions of recovery and the effects of abuse and what God desires for my life. I have been through several years of Christian counseling and a couple of recovery ministry courses and thought I had "worked through" just about all of it. What I'm learning from women who have been in ministry as long as I've been alive is that recovery is a life-long process. All of us are in a sense in recovery from our fallen state. But each of us has been wounded in different ways. One of the things that impresses me so much with this book is it takes all the knowledge and heart care the Lord has done in my life to the next level. It reveals fresh insights on a prevalent problem, but also can be broadly applied to any wounded heart.

It is a brilliant look at the damages abuse has on the soul, but it is the first literature I have found, secular and Christian, that places responsibility on the victim. Not for what happened, but for the life they are now living.

I always thought the purpose of recovery was recovery of self, of restoring what was lost and repairing a distorted image of God. While this book doesn't deny that, it places the weight in my hands as it makes the overriding issue my current idolatry and how that places out in my relationship with God and with others. There is no room for blame.

I would recommend this book to anyone. As someone who works with abuse victims, statistically 1 out of 4 women you know has already been a victim of abuse or will be in her lifetime. For males, the numbers are just slightly less. This book was written for those who work with victims of abuse, victims themselves, or spouses, etc. I'll be sharing things from time to time that have impacted me. Here's some introductory remarks from the foreword:

***

"I WISH THINGS WERE SIMPLE. I wish that difficult problems could all be easily resolved through sincere determination to obey God, regular time in His Word, and fervent prayer.

In a sense, they can. The heart that is single-minded in its commitment to follow Christ will learn to unself-consciously love, to be so consumed with the wonder of God and promoting joy in others that personal concerns retreat to a well-deserved lower priority.

But our hearts are deceitful. A simple decision to surrender everything to Jesus may start a good process, but there are a host of hard, ugly things to deal with that we prefer to overlook as we keep surrendering.

We sometimes manage to persuade ourselves that God is as please as we are with our developing maturity, while in fact His Spirit is gently pushing open doors into the darker regions of our hearts that we pretend don’t exist.

Christians who have the courage to follow the Spirit into the unfriendly parts of their souls have a harder time pretending that the maturing process is coming along nicely. They face the fact that living in fallen world sometimes exposes people to experiences that no bearer of God’s image was ever meant to endure and that our reactions to those experiences are deeply stained with our own fallenness.

When people—through absolutely no fault of their own—are subjected to terrible crimes against God and against their souls, like sexual abuse, powerful forces are set in motion within them that make it especially frightening to give themselves to others. Exhorting them to “just trust God” tends to generate frustration and provoke angry questions about the reality of the Christian truth.

One of the great needs in the church today is to replace a model for simplistic sanctification with an understanding of the gospel that is both simple and penetrating, reaching with power into the realities of sinful, damaged souls. That shift requires pioneer work in thinking about tough problems like childhood sexual abuse. Problems that, because they do not yield easily to our current ideas about victory in Christ, tend to be ignored.

If that pioneering effort is to be biblical, it must insist that the image of God is central to developing a solid view of personality; that our sinfulness, not how we’ve been sinned against, is our biggest problem; that forgiveness, not wholeness, is our greatest need; that repentance, not insight, is the dynamic in all real change.

The Wounded Heart is a remarkable book. It goes far beyond shallow ideas about change but remains firmly fixed on biblical foundations as it explores the depths of damage inflicted by sexual abuse…

Dr. Allender has managed to write graphically about an easily sensationalized topic without crossing the line of decency, and he keeps the focus on the gospel by passionately proclaiming his confidence in its power to restore victims of abuse to their dignity as forgiven people, who can now forgive and boldly love from sad yet joyfully alive heart."

- Dr. Larry Crabb, foreword of The Wounded Heart

beloved.

“The unfathomable mystery of God is that God is a Lover who wants to be loved.

The one who created us is waiting for our response to the love that gave us our being. God not only says: “You are my Beloved.” God also asks: “Do you love me?” and offers us countless chances to say “Yes.”

That is the spiritual life: the chance to say “Yes” to our inner truth. The spiritual life, thus understood, radically changes everything. Being born and growing up, leaving home and finding a career, being praised and being rejected, walking and resting, praying and playing, becoming ill and becoming healed—yes, living and dying—they all become expressions of that divine question: “Do you love me?” And at every point of the journey there is the choice to say “Yes” and the choice to say “No.”

Once you catch a glimpse of this spiritual vision, you can see how the many distinctions that are so central in our daily living lose their meaning.

When joy and pain are both opportunities to say “Yes” to our divine childhood, then they are more alike than they are different. When the expression of being awarded a prize and the experience of being found lacking in excellence both offer us a chance to claim our true identity as the “Beloved” of God, these experiences are more similar than they are different. When feeling lonely and feeling at home both call to discover more fully who the God is whose children we are, these feelings are more united than they are distinct. When, finally, both living and dying bring us closer to the full realization of our spiritual selfhood, they are not the great opposites the world would have us to believe; they are, instead, two sides of the same mystery of God’s love. Living the spiritual life means living as one unified reality.”

- Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen

chosen, blessed, broken and given

This book is a must-read. It's one of those you're really sad is over. In Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen uses these four words: chosen/taken, blessed, broken and given to describe four phases to “becoming the beloved” that play out in our every day life.

“To identify the movements of the Spirit in our lives, I have found it helpful to use four words: taken, blessed, broken and given. These words summarize my life as a priest because each day, when I come together around the table with members of my community, I take bread, bless it, break it and give it. These words also summarize my life as a Christian because, as a Christian, I am called to become bread for the world: bread that is taken, blessed, broken and given. Most importantly, however they summarize my life as a human being because in every moment of my life somewhere, somehow, the taking, the blessing, the breaking and the giving are happening.

I must tell you at this point that these four words have become the most important words of my life

…As those who are chosen, blessed, broken and given, we are called to live our lives with a deep inner joy and peace. It is the life of the Beloved, lived in a world constantly trying to convince us that the burden is on us to prove that we are worthy of being loved.”

- Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen

Delight

My delight can only be in the Lord. Sometimes we just need to stop and enjoy God. Listen, look, see what He is doing. Sit and thank Him for who He is. Enjoying God makes life a lot more meaningful. Anytime we try to wrap our identity in something else, we will only be disappointed. One of the most encouraging things in my support raising process is each day God strengthens and reaffirms the calling I am now pursuing. Every challenge simply gives me an opportunity to really put what I say I believe into action, do I trust Jesus with my life, or not.

“I have never doubted the will of God, it was His plan, His choice.”

- Come Be My Light, the private writings of Mother Teresa

I’m nowhere near Mother Teresa, but a young Mother Teresa said this as she embarked on her journey beginning her life as a missionary.

I can really relate to the darkness that was behind her light. As I’m finding I find new strength in the darkness as God brings me through and refines me through difficulty. Yet, what this has taught me, is even pursuing God’s call on our lives can be something we find delight in, another idol, but He wants our life to be found in Him. Not our dreams, not our passions, not our relationships, not our hopes.


I’m finding in this process, in talking with others, we all have different doubts. Yet, my doubts are never that I’m supposed to do this or that God is leading me to this, He has only used this time to make me more assured of that and more assured of who He is.

My doubts come in the form of how God will provide. Not if, but how. I am open to God completely stopping me in the midst of this process if it is clear to me and the others around me that this isn't what I should be doing with my life right now. But right now, the battle in my heart is how. How He will provide the support, when, how long will it take, How he will provide the relationships I need, how he will provide this or that. I have this insatiable need to know so I can prepare myself… but I’m learning that if I knew, I wouldn’t need faith. It’s true with anything in the Christian life. We start with a surrender acknowledging we are not in control and submit our lives to follow One greater. My desire for control has to die daily.

I’m finding in the midst of those doubts is a sin that is called the root of all sin: unbelief.

When I start doubting any of these things, I stop believing certain things about God, like He delights in me and longs for me to simply delight in Him, that He knows what I need and is always working for my best interest, that sometimes He will take away and cut away the things I think I need but are really hindering me from being fully His… whenever my idols are revealed and removed… I am always most aware of how quickly other idols can “pop up and flourish in the deep recesses of the heart” if I am not careful.

Delight. We long to delight in the things of this world. In people. In people’s approval of us. In human affirmation and acceptance. In the people in our lives. In our possessions. In our families. In our kids. In our husbands. In our careers… but God continues and will continue to strip us away from those things so He alone can have our hearts full attention.

A.W. Tozer says, “It seems that he makes our crosses of all the things we like the best so that when they turn to bitterness we are able to learn the true measure of eternal values..."

It is only then, these things are put in their rightful place and God is God again in our lives.

Each new day, again I’ll choose…

I’m learning the Christian life of following Christ and becoming more like Him is a series of choices. I want the 90-year-old Mazvita to be happy with the choices the young Mazvita made on this pilgrimage. I want the Mazvita who arrives home in the presence of the Father to be even more happy with the decisions I am making now.

The secret is found in daily re-aligning our lives to simply worship Him. For Him to be our delight. We find, no matter what we’re going through or what we’re facing, that simply cherishing the One who created us, we have all we need to get through.

In the quiet, in the stillness I know that you are God

In the secret of your presence I know there I am restored

When you call I won't refuse

Each new day, again I'll choose

There is no one else for me

None but Jesus

Crucified to set me free

Now I live to bring Him praise

In the chaos, in confusion I know you're sovereign still

In the moment of my weakness You give me grace to do your will

When you call I won't delay

This my song through all my days

There is no one else for me

None but Jesus

Crucified to set me free

Now I live to bring Him praise

I am yours and you are mine...

All my delight is in you Lord

All of my hope

All of my strength

All my delight is in you Lord

Forevermore

- Hillsong, None But Jesus, my jam

Wholeness.

Isn't this what we long for?

“Wholeness is brokenness owned and thereby healed.”

I’m finding I have to guard and protect the things that make me feel whole.

Last week, after trick or treating with Korrin and the kids, and relaxing at the house after the night once we put the kids to bed, I realized again, a part of me is restored when I’m at their home.

As I held little Brennan on my chest as he fell asleep, a part of me is at rest.
Writing is another one of those things. I have to create spaces in my day, even if it’s a 30 minute break between support raising to sit and write in my blog or journal. A part of me is regenerated.

Dancing is another.

Having coffee with friends.

Being around other women.

Being alone, spending time in solitude.

These are all things our soul needs. Everyone has different specific things, but these things allow us to experience the process of becoming more whole and more complete. In a place that is constantly broken, we have to find ways to foster our wholeness so we can offer that gift to the world.

hush

YOU WERE ONLY A CHILD
WHEN YOU LEARNED ADULT THINGS.
YOU FELT SAD AND CONFUSED WHEN
THEY SAID IT WAS YOUR FAULT.
YOU NEVER TOLD ANYONE
YOU WERE ALWAYS TOLD TO HUSH

UNTIL NOW.

“What Nicole Braddock Bromley does for survivors of childhood of sexual abuse in Hush is what Jesus Himself did for the mute—gives them back their voice.”

I realized this is one issue I hate reading books about. Particularly when its for my own healing process, but I found this one today that offers a fresh Christian perspective from someone who has been there and is fighting for others. Deep down, I know that God reaping a harvest in what I sow in tears. I know I will only be able to empower women to the degree I have experienced His grace and been empowered. Sometimes the foundations have to be shaken so we remember where we've come from and how good He has been to us. I know what it is like to be sick and I know what it is like to be free. I choose freedom, victory and life.

"Founder, director, sexual abuse survivor, speaker and author, Nicole Braddock Bromley, devotes her life to spreading a powerful and vital message of hope and inspiration to audiences across America and around the globe. In her internationally-recognized keynote speech, "Our Little Secret," Nicole uses her own life story to empower students on a journey from victim to Victory Over Impossible CircumstancEs (VOICE.) Nicole impacts all ages and backgrounds, moving audiences toward healthy relationships and realizing their individual ability to make a difference." http://www.onevoiceenterprises.com/

A day in the life of the heart

From another blogger:

I cried when I was born and every day shows why – George Herbert.”

Our hearts beckon us towards romance and adventure. Music, art, literature have all portrayed and explored our inner lives, or its loss. For those of us who have lost the initial romance and adventure that our initial encounter with god brought us, it ends up haunting us. For me my haunting took on the form of tears flowing from a frightened girl who could find no meeting place between the life she found herself living and the needs of her own wounded heart that never felt the connection with mother and father so necessary to living with courage and hope.

There are arrows that pierce our hearts. Sometimes it’s the arrow from a father that never looked up from his newspaper when his son was trying to converse with him. Or maybe its an arrow that lodge in you when someone said to you ‘You don’t know much kid do you?’, or maybe it was the arrow when as a child you tried to console your wounded mother and she shunned you away when you put your hand on her shoulder and said to her ‘It will be alright’ and she responded ‘What do you know about life?’. Or maybe it was the wounding words of a parent or teacher saying ‘You won’t ever amount to much’.

At some point an arrow comes our way that finally entrenches itself so deep in our hearts that it delivers the final blow, and we vow to never be in a place of vulnerability again, and never allow our heart to make us reach out for love or the adventure we want.

As Brent Curtis says:

This is the story of our lives, in one way or another. The haunting of the Romance and the Message of the arrows are so radically different and they seem so mutually exclusive they split our hearts in two. In every way that the romance is full of beauty and wonder, the arrows are equally powerful in their ugliness and devastation. The romance seems to promise a life of wholeness through a deep connection with the great Heart behind the universe. The arrows deny it telling us, ‘You are on your own. There is no romance, no one strong and kind who is calling your to an exotic adventure.’

The arrows mock such naïveté, warning us ‘Just watch yourself – disaster is a moment away’.
The romance invites us to trust. The arrows intimidate us into self-reliance.

Our inner self whispers to us that we are someone special, that our heart is good because it is made of someone good, the arrows tell us we are a dime a dozen, worthless even dark and twisted and dirty.

So we try to manipulate our world and all the while watching our backs.

Our heart tells us ‘god is good, you can trust him’. But then we tell it ‘don’t ever let life out of your control’. We make ourselves believe that if we just didn’t want so much, we wouldn’t be so vulnerable. To loose hope has the same effect on our heart as it would be to stop breathing.”

wake at all, to mystery

From another blogger:

We wake, if ever we wake at all, to mystery – Annie Dillard.

"Our internal story, that which others cant see is where we really live. If we are ever going to understand our lives, ourselves and god we need to only listen to our heart.

Federick Buechner said:

If god speaks to us at all other than through such official channels as the Bible and the church, then I think that he speaks to us largely through what happens to us…if we keep our hearts and minds open as well as our hearts, if we listen with patience and hope, if we remember at all deeply and honestly, then I think we come to recognise, beyond all doubt, that , however faintly we may hear him, he is indeed speaking to us, and that, however little we may understand of it, his word to each of us is both recoverable and precious beyond telling.

We often hear our hearts better in the morning or late at night, when we are less occupied by the thoughts of the day or the challenges that lie ahead.

Our heart tells us ‘there is something missing, and there is more’We dismiss this voice as an intruder trying to call us upward and into a world where we do not dare to tread, a world that seems full of disillusionment and heartache.

We are both attracted to its message but fearful of its beckoning.

The life of the heart is a place of great mystery. We have many expressions for what involves the heart.

We say someone is ‘heartless’
Or we ask them to ‘have a heart’
Or a broken relationship makes one ‘broken-hearted’
A brave soldier is called ‘brave hearted’
Good people are said to be ‘good hearted’
We ask for a ‘heart to heart’ talk
We feel ‘light-hearted’ when we are happy

From our early days life has taught us to ignore the desires of the heart, and to numb the deepest yearning of our heart.

What happens is what Frederick Buechner describes as:

Our original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all…rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather

Maybe you are known as the accountant, or the banker, or the teacher, or the joker, or the mother. But these titles and labels are only what the outside world give us based on the role we are playing for them.But inside, where we live our true lives, we are nothing like that. We life our outer lives from ‘ought’. I ought to do this and that. But the inner life constantly wants us to live out of ‘desire’. The outer life make us look for quick fixes…ten steps to a successful marriage, five ways to loose weight, three ways to be promoted. Our faith becomes like an obstacle course, if only I read my bible more, or go to church more, or pray more, I will be more successful and more acceptable to god.

Our inner life’s story is not governed by ought, it’s rather rooted in desire. And we early on learn to kill this desire, for fear of what we might have to face if we give in to its desires.It’s in this inner life, and with the inner voice, that god calls to us. We cannot hear this voice if we have lost touch with our heart.

Faith, the most precious thing a believer can have is this….GOD PERCEIVED BY THE HEART.

The bible says. ‘Guard above else your heart, for out of it comes the issues of life’ A sick and hemorrhaging heart is what god is good at fixing. He is into restoring hearts and making them well again.He understands the questions we ask ourselves.‘What is this restlessness and emptiness I feel? What does the spiritual life have to do with the rest of my life? Why does this longing for adventure, romance not leave me alone? What does god want from me? We make ourselves believe that we have to grow up and out of the childish yearning of our heart, making it out to be stupid and irresponsible. We believe that if we ignore our hearts for long enough the restlessness will go away…..but it seldom does.

As Annie said...We wake, if we wake at all, to mystery.”

Healed.

“I cried when I was born and every day shows why.”
- George Herbert

Sometimes we just need to know we’re not alone.

We need to be heard.
To share our wounds in the presence of safe people. And for our brokenness to be accepted and therefore healed.
Yet it’s going to be a long road.

Probably he scariest part of today was realizing this feeling unlocked a realization that there were depths to this pain within I am still not aware of.

As I cried as I tried to get the images out of my mind, wide awake, and haunted.

Haunted by the realization that this wasn’t going away. A world had been unearthed that has to be traveled.

Mental sexual abuse.

I had no idea what one of my mentors meant by this when she said this weeks ago. I remember thinking, I’m glad I’ve never experienced that.

But basically she says it is almost worse than the immediate effects of sexual abuse because it is the ongoing mental abuse of the images and memories and flashbacks that can haunt you without warning.

Yet it only took one situation, one little event to trigger a flood of memories and emotions locked deep within.

I’ve been trying to escape them for the last 24 hours.

When you have to be your own advocate.

I’ve learned how to fight my own battles, through the tools I’ve learned through going to Christian counseling in college and now doing counseling and advocacy work for women at the shelter, yet today, my advocacy was bringing myself to God.

He had to do the rest.

I realized the crisis I was experiencing was “time-limited” and that I needed to do the best thing for the immediate danger I was currently facing.

My mind was racing of all the people I needed to call to meet up with later, but first I needed my Savior…
And the words of Hebrews from a passage I’ve been studying keep ringing through… our Jesus being our high priest “who truly meets our every need.”

He is the only one.

There was no one else who could save me completely in that moment. A friend actually texted me right back and I told her I couldn’t talk right now.

My heart knew who needed to be the one to first deal with this.

As I processed and wept for about an hour, the sinking realization was the fact that I couldn’t do this alone. That I was going to need to reach out to someone equipped. This was beyond me. This was beyond any territory I had thus far traveled. I was not going to delve deeper into these memories alone.

The feeling.

The feeling I couldn’t shake was feeling dirty. I just felt dirty and disgusting all day. I just wanted it to go away. I just wanted the images to go away.

And I realized what this lady had meant when he told me recovery is a lifelong process. Nobody wants to hear that. Part of me didn’t believe her. Part of me didn’t want to believe her that her experiences were severe and mine were too which meant there was a lot more recovery that needed to happen.

I look at all God has brought me through and the years of counseling, the mentoring, the recovery ministry experiences, the support group, and say, you mean I have to go through more?

Part of me didn’t want to voluntarily go there. I have told myself I will not go there. Emotionally. Through some of pain that is still there.
Then this comes and painfully reminds me it cannot be ignored.
I do not want to be immobilized.

I experienced emotions in the last 24 hours I haven’t felt in over four years.
I haven’t felt like a victim in as long as I can remember.

But it only takes one triggering event to take me back to that place.

God made me a fighter.
For as long as I’ve known, I’ve had to fight. He knows I wouldn’t have survived the environment I lived in without it, yet some days you don’t have it in you to keep clutching your sword.

Today, there was nothing left. I felt powerless. I felt weak and small. I felt the opposite of how I’ve felt the last four years, and really the freedom I’ve experienced mostly the last two years.

My prayers were desperate. Mercy, Father, have mercy on me.
Deliver me, o lord. Please come and save me.
Rescue me.

And then I left the hiding place I was in and went to a restroom to make myself "presentable" for going on with my day.

I was struck when I looked in the mirror.

I look unscathed.

I felt like I’d just been rescued from the most intense spiritual battle I’ve experienced in a long time. And was dealing with forces and experiences that were disturbing. I felt beat up and a mess. After crying violently for nearly an hour and laying at the feet of the Lord desperate just to hear his voice and experience his comfort… I was sure I would look it.

But I looked unscathed. My eyes weren’t even red or puffy. There was no trace of a breakdown...

Then immediately I heard these words…

“you will pass through the waters, but they will not sweep over you… you will go through the fire, but not be burned…”

man. It was so powerful. As I was walking to my car, I literally felt a strength propelling me forward as my weary soul traveled on.

He heard me.
He is rescuing me.
He is here.

He hasn’t abandoned me.

When I got to the car I turned to that familiar passage in Isaiah.

I realized that verse become real to me in the midst of my most intense captivity. In the days I was still living in the victimization but was waiting for Him to come for me.

That was when God became real in my life. More real than anything I was experiencing or seeing. I had a hope in the God who is My Deliverer and knew he would not forget me.

Those words pierced my heart years ago, as they brought comfort and promise to my broken spirit.

My eyes jumped to the words I heard spoken just moments ago…

“When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;

And when you pass through the rivers,
They will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,
You will not be burned;
The flames will not set you ablaze…”

Just as I felt I had been released from that fire today— unscathed…

But this beautiful series of promises starts with this declaration of who is speaking:

Israel’s Only Savior...

“Fear not, Mazvita, for I have redeemed you…

I have summoned you by name, you are mine…”

Only the once captive knows the power of being bought back to their rightful owner.
Only those once familiar with the prison walls know the grace they have experienced is truly a gift, one they never want to be without again.

Only the captives know their true need for a savior. And the sufficiency of the One who to whom none can compare.

So I'm healed. For today. And that is enough.

HUMILITY AND HONESTY, pt. II

"He lived securely in his Father's acceptance... Jesus' inner life was centered in God. His communion with his Abba transformed his vision of reality... His single-minded orientation towards his Father freed him from self-consciousness..."

So I'm reposting these thoughts from Manning on humility and honesty and how Jesus modeled it because it has taken on new meaning today. I'm finding Jesus is constantly providing opportunities for us to shed our false selves we like to interact with one another with and bring healing through humble and honest relationships. I experienced this twice today. I felt loved and accepted in my brokenness by two peers.

The most profound came with one of my guy friends. I almost canceled on him. I knew I couldn't not be honest about what happened today. But I didn't want to go there with a guy. He's someone I really cherish so I took the risk and went. I was met with nothing more than acceptance, thereby bringing healing into my life. I can just be me. I love our times together. We can be really serious one moment, then laughing our heads off the next.

Real is hard to come by.

Somehow in the world we live with now, genuine, open and honest relationships are becoming more of a rare entity. Especially in the technological age we're in, (that makes me sound really old but it's true) where people can present their false selves online or in text messages or im's or emails anytime. We get so used to the false selves it creates another mask. We get to used to the mask that we are fooled into think that is the real us. But the thing I struggle to accept with online, especially facebook, is that it is not reality. It's what you choose to present as your own reality.

Look at your facebook photo. You chose it for a reason. It communicates to the world the self you want them to say. You haven't changed it for a while. Why. Because you don't have a better one to put up. What is with that? Why are we so messed up.

This is where I'm finding more and more value in face to face relationships and even phone conversations. I started a "rule" a few years ago when I started blogging that I would not write about things I did not already tell someone or planned on talking with someone about within the next couple of days. Why. If I am not sharing the deepest parts of me with the people around me, I'm hiding. Online doesn't do anything.

Nothing compares to Monday meeting with my pastor and sharing with him story after story about how I've been burned in relationships. To seeing his reaction. In telling him some of the other obstacles I'm facing right now and having him empathize. Nothing will compare. When you're really hurting, you need a human, live body there who knows, understands and cares. Sometimes that's all you need.

Writing, in my written journal and then on here, gives me a chance to untangle my thoughts and perceive the events in my life in context of the larger reality that is the story of God. It helps me move past myself so I can take my place in this Story. But they always have to be voiced to a human face to face if it is something significant. I was especially blessed tonight. My friend gave me hope again that I do need guys in my life and that there are those that can be trusted. I need my guy friends just as much as I need my girls. It was so freeing to be heard, accepted, and loved.

More from Ruthless Trust:

"Through the smokescreen of rationalization, projection, and insulation, we remain on the merry-go-round of denial and dishonesty. Unable to accept our brokenness, we wear a thousand masks to disguise the face of fear…

Franciscan Richard Rohr writes, "Humility and honesty are really the same thing. A humble person is simply a brutally honest person about the whole truth. You and I came along a few years ago, and we're going to be gone in a few years. The only honest response to life is a humble one."

Alcoholic anonymous offers a classical definition of humility: "stark, raving honesty."

...Humble people are small in their own eyes, honest about their struggles, and open to constructive criticism. Following the counsel of Jesus to take the last place, they are not shocked or offended when others put them there. They trust that they are loved, accepted, forgiven, and redeemed just as they are. Aware of their innate poverty, the throw themselves son the mercy of God with carefree abandon.

Jesus said, "Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart" (Matt. 11:29). In what did the humility of Jesus consist? Low self-esteem, feelings of unworthiness, disappointment with his spiritual progress? Absurd! He was enthralled with his Father. In utter self-forgetfulness, he lived for God.

The central theme in his personal life was the growing intimacy with, trust in, and love of his Abba. He lived securely in his Father's acceptance. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you" (John 15:9), he reassures us. Jesus' inner life was centered in God. His communion with his Abba transformed his vision of reality, enabling him to perceive divine love toward sinners and scalawags. Jesus did not live from himself or for himself but from the graciousness of the Other, who is incomprehensibly caring. He understood his Father's compassionate heart.… Why was Jesus attracted to the unattractive, why did he desire the undesirable and love those deemed unlovely by human standards? Because his father does… His single-minded orientation towards his Father freed him from self-consciousness…Following Jesus, the humble in heart waste little time in introspection, navel-gazing, looking the mirror and being anxious about their spiritual growth. Their self-acceptance without self-concern is anchored in the acceptance of Jesus in their struggle to be faithful.

They fasten their attention on God……

Steeped in the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus identified the mystical tradition of the Anawin (the humble remnant who compounded a sense of personal powerlessness with unfailing confidence in the love of God and total surrender to the guidance of his will) with himself ("I am gentle and humble in heart") and gave that tradition pride of place in his preaching. In his inaugural address, the Sermon on the Mount, he began, "Blessed are those who know they are poor, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs" (Matt. 5:3)...Again and again he returned to this theme: "For he who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 8:14); the way of humility is "the narrow gate and the hard road that leads to life and only a few find it" (Matt. 7:14).

A careful reading of the gospel message suggests that Jesus needs nothing but our humility and confidence to work miracles in us."

- Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust

Found.

What's my story?

"I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see. I am captured. By a love divine. More real and more amazing than all I ever dreamed." - Mazvita Matsiga, age 24

"I could come up with a fancy definition for love, but words aren't enough to describe the love I've found in Christ." - Ricki Row, age 19

Listening to one of my rooomate's Hillsong cds today and this song captured everything I wanted to but couldn't find to words to express:

"Found" by Hillsong United

Amazing love,
now what else shall I need

Your name brings life,
it's more than the air I breathe

My world has changed,
when Your life
You gave for me

My purpose found and all that You want for me

And I've found myself in You
And I've found myself in You

And I've found myself in You, Jesus
And I've found myself in You, Lord

Amazing love,
now what else shall I need

Your name brings life,
it's more than the air I breathe

And I've found myself in You
And I've found myself in You

And I've found myself in You, Jesus
And I've found myself in You, Lord

So take me to a place
where I can see You face to face
and all I wanna do,
all I wanna do is worship You

So take me to a place
where I can see You face to face
and all I wanna do,
all I wanna do is

worship You

Streams in the desert: he will sit as a refiner.

He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. (Malachi 3:3)

“Our Father, who seeks to perfect His saints in holiness, knows the value of the refiner’s fire. It is with the most precious metals that a metallurgist will take the greatest care. He subjects the metal to a hot fire, for only the refiner’s fire will melt the metal, release the dross, and allow the remaining, pure metal to take a new and perfect shape in the mold.

A good refiner never leaves the crucible but, as the above verse indicates, “will sit” down by it so the dire will not become even one degree too hot and possibly harm the metal. And as soon as he skims the last bit of dross from the surface and sees his face reflected in the pure metal, he extinguishes the fire.” – Arthur Tappan Pierson

Nobody likes having the heat turned up. When you realize the storms have come once again, you are left with nothing but to run or flee from the living God.

I loved this above passage on the refiner's fire, it was the best thing to intersect my thinking the other day as it struck me that God never leaves the fire. He will sit.... those words were so powerful to me as they brought all my fears and anxious thoughts to a screeching halt.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded that He is here.

He is here.

The more I am following Jesus, the true cost of what it means to follow Him comes into clearer view. It will cost you everything. The things you hold the closest will be the first to go. It will be painful. It will be messy. It will not feel good. It will not be certain. It will feel like everything around you is crumbling.

Until you allow the truth of God's word to intersect your conclusions and you find that there is not "some strange thing happening to you."

One of my mentors always tells me, I know how to stop all these things from happening to you, Mazvita. Stop pursuing a life of the gospel. Stop wanting to give your life to fight for the kingdom. Get off the frontlines. Take a backseat. Stop fighting even though nearly everyone around you is giving in, putting down their sword... stop living for what matters.

I told this person today that I just wanted others to fight with. I've been incredibly discouraged to find the road get lonelier and lonelier. To find the ones who were once running mates, giving up, stopping, choosing another path. It's heartbreaking. To see the ones I had left trading it in. For those things that will not satisfy.

It makes for a lonely journey. Some days you want to quit. Some days you wonder if there will be others fighting with you. Some days you wonder why you're seeing it differently.
There is no life apart from Christ and He will crucify all the ways we try to find life apart from Him.

We all know nothing worth fighting for comes easy, but living it is a different reality. In the face of God continually burning away the fields of thorns so there can be fruit, it is most critical that we lay our feelings aside and trust what we know of His character.

That we have favor with the Lord. That He is for us. Always. That He is faithful. These are the rich promises we must cling to in the face of adversity. Or else our faith is in vain. For we having a living hope. A living hope in Christ Jesus, that anchors us in the midst of the most violent of storms.

That sometimes God brings the storms in our lives so we can experience His grace and be freed of all the ways we try to make ourselves right with Him and find approval and worth from others.

Just like Jonah. God sent the storm in Jonah's life so he would experience the grace of God. So he would experience the incredible relentless pursuit of the God we love to run from.

Jonah's problem was not fear of failure. He was not afraid of going to preach to the Ninevites.

His issue was self-righteousness. He feared success more than anything, His anger and true problem with God is revealed in chapter 3 of Jonah, where God brings mercy to the Ninevites... Jonah says... I knew it, I knew you would do this... to people who do not deserve it... Lord... so that is why I did not want to come.

Yet, the storm comes and sets Jonah free from himself.
God sends the storms until he has our hearts.
God sends the storms to save us from ourselves.
God sends the storms and the earthquakes to loosen chains.
And to bring us back to Himself.
Where true life is found.

These [trials] have come [why] so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

1 Peter 1:6-8

It will cost you everything.

“Toys and trinkets are easily earned, but the most valuable things carry a heavy price.”

“The Cross of Obedience," an essay in A.W. Tozer's The Radical Cross

"Some people in reading the Bible say they cannot understand why Elijah and other men had such active power with the living God. It is quite simple. God heard Elijah because Elijah had heard God. God did according to the word of Elijah because Elijah had done according to the word of God. You cannot separate the two.

When we are willing to consider the active will of God for our lives, we come immediately to a personal knowledge of the cross because the will of God is the place of blessed, painful, fruitful trouble!

The Apostle Paul knew about that. He called it “the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.” It is my conviction that one of the reasons we exhibit very little spiritual power is because we are unwilling to accept and experience fellowship of the Savior’s sufferings, which means acceptance of His cross.

How can we have and know the blessed intimacy of the Lord Jesus if we are unwilling to take the route which He has demonstrated? We do not have it because we refuse to relate the will of God to the cross.

All of the great saints have been acquainted with the cross—even those who lived before the time of Christ. They were acquainted with the cross in essence because their obedience brought it to them.

All Christians living in full obedience will experience the cross and find themselves exercised in spirit very frequently. If they know their own hearts, they will be prepared to wrestle the cross when it comes.

Think of Jacob in the Old Testament and notice the direction from which he cross came—directly from his own carnal self. It took Jacob some time to discover the nature of his own heart and to admit and confess that Jacob’s cross was Jacob himself.

Read again about Daniel and you will discover that his cross was the world. Consider Job and you will find that his cross was the devil. The devil crucified Job, the world crucified Daniel, and Jacob was crucified on the tree of his own Jacobness, his own carnality.

Study the lives of the apostles in the New Testament and you will find that their crosses came from the religious authorities.

Likewise in Church history we look at Luther and note that his cross came from the Roman Church which makes so much of wooden crosses, while Wesley’s cross came from the Protestant Church. Continue to name the great souls who followed the will of God, and you will name the men and women of God who looked forward by faith, and their obedience invariably led them into places of blessed and painful and fruitful trouble.

I must point out here the fallacy of thinking that in following Jesus we can easily go up on the hillside and die—just like that! I admit that when Jesus was here on earth, the easiest and cheapest way to get off was to follow Jesus physically. Anyone could get out of work and say good-bye with the explanation, “I am going to follow Jesus.” Multitudes did this. They followed Him physically, but they had no understanding of Him spiritually. Therefore, in that day the cheapest, easiest way to dispose of the cross was to carry it physically.

But brethren, taking our cross is not going to mean the physical act of following Jesus along a dusty pathway. We are not going to climb the hill where there are already two crosses in place and be nailed up between them.

Our cross will be determined by whatever pain and suffering and trouble which will yet come to us because of our obedience to the will of God. The true saints of God have always borne witness that wholehearted obedience brings the cross into the light quicker than anything else.

IDENTIFIED WITH CHRIST

Oneness with Christ means to be identified with Christ, identified with Him in crucifixion. But we must go on to be identified with Him in resurrection as well, for beyond the cross is resurrection and the manifestation of His presence.

I would not want to make the mistake of some preachers who have never gotten beyond the message of death, death, death! They preach it so much that they never get anyone beyond death into resurrection life and victory… I was greatly helped by the radiant approach of Dr. A.B. Simpson to the meaning of the cross and death to self. He took one through the meaning of the cross to the understanding that beyond the cross there is resurrection life and power, and identification with a risen Savior and the manifestation of His loving presence.

The old fifteenth-century saint whom we have quoted declared that “God is ingenuous in making us crosses.”

Considering that, we have to confess that when some Christians say, “I am crucified with Christ by faith,” they are merely using a technical term and are not talking about a cross in reality. But God wants His children to know the cross. He knows that only spiritual good can come to us as a result of our identification with the Lord Jesus. So He is ingenuous in making crosses for us.

The quotation continues:

'He may make them of iron and of lead which are heavy of themselves. He makes some of straw which seem to weigh nothing, but one discovers that they are no less difficult to carry. A cross that appears to be of straw so that others think it amounts to nothing may be crucifying you through and through.

He makes some with gold and precious stones which dazzle the spectators and excite the envy of the public but which crucify no less than the crosses which are more despised.'

Christians who are put in high places, Christians who are entrusted with wealth and influence, know something about the kind of cross that may seem dazzling to spectators and excites the envy of the public—but if they know how to take it, it crucifies them no less than the others.

It seems that he makes our crosses of all the things we like the best so that when they turn to bitterness we are able to learn the true measure of eternal values..."