Heart Condition: Part 2 More on Emotional Healing...

So What do you carry in your heart?

Here is a list of a few if the things that might be in there that will absolutely, without a doubt, hold you back from experiencing freedom in your life...

Unforgiveness
Shame from sin
Pride
Perversion
Addictions to Alcohol, Drugs, Food, Masturbation, Pornography, Eating Disorders, etc.
Strongholds
Generational Curses
Lust
Selfishness
Anger
Bitterness
Resentfulness
Hurt
Pain
Self-Hatred
Vanity
Feelings of Abandonment

There are more, but this is enough for you to get an idea of what I am talking about.  These things weigh you down so heavily that you feel like there is no escape.  You cannot move forward because these things are so heavy they are preventing you from coming anywhere close to the future that God has for you.

I remember a time when I said, "I feel like Satan has my arm and is pulling me through life."  I had lost control.  The funny thing is that the reason I lost control was because I decided to take control.  I decided to walk away from God's "rules".  I no longer thought I needed His guidance.  I thought I was becoming FREE.  I knew He was good.  I knew He was right.  But I mistakenly thought I knew best in that moment.  So I took my life into my own hands and just did what I wanted.

I drank, I partied and I had sex... and more.

It was fun... for a little while.  Oh how the enemy fooled me.  When the nostalgia of being a new party girl wore off... all I was to anyone was another one of them.  I no longer got that special attention that I had gotten when I first entered the party scene.  There was nothing special about me.  I had a heart that was full of pain and addictions.  I could not sleep at night unless I had someone next to me, or unless I had partied so much that I just knocked out exhausted and drunk.  I felt like I had lost complete control of my life and I was no longer worthy of God's grace.

Thank God He never gave up on me.

So what is in your heart?  Chances are you are not even exactly sure.  Some of what is in there might be obvious, but some of it is so deeply rooted that God himself will have to remind you of it in order for you to be healed.


"Test me, Lord, and try me,
    examine my heart and my mind" -Psalm 26:2


"...He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and 
will expose the motives of the heart." -1 Corinthians 4:5

"Search me, God, and know my heart; 
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting." 
-Psalm 139:23-24

Once God reveals to you what is in your heart that needs to come out, what do you do with that knowledge?  What you do is this; Ask him to purify your heart through the Holy Spirit by His grace.  When Jesus died on the cross, it was for our sins, our hurt, our pain, etc.  Forgiveness of sins is great... and that is one of the things burdening our hearts... sin.  But He can also clean our hurt and pain from things that were completely out of our control.  It is not something you have to wait until heaven to experience.  

By the blood of the lamb, we have emotional healing available to us right here and now.  

But know this!!!!!   When your heart is cleaned and healed up by God... you better protect what He has done!  What Satan sees is a soft, clean, brand new place to wreak havoc.  The first thing He will tell you is this.... "That did not really happen," and  "You are still the same dirty person as you have always been."  You must equip yourself daily to fight off the flaming arrows of the evil one.  Please stay tuned to this series.  The next post will be about guarding our hearts, which is absolutely crucial to our ability to live out our freedom in Christ.  

Lord Jesus,

Search my heart and show me what is there that is causing me pain and suffering.  Show me what is causing me to be burdened, anxious and distant from you.  Show me what does not please you.  Show me what is stopping me from experiencing the freedom that you have in store for me.  Show me what it is so that I am able to ask you to remove it from my life.  I need your power Lord, or I will be stuck with these things forever.  Remove them from me in Jesus' mighty name.   I believe that you are able to remove these things from my heart.  

Do it for your glory, In Jesus Name,

Amen.

Heart Condition: Part 1 - Emotional Healing

There I was in drama practice. It was my first year in Master's Commission, I was 21 years old and we were preparing to do a human video to the song, "Wonderful," by Everclear.   
I had been assigned the role of the Mom in an abusive relationship. Our team had spent time in prayer before practice. We had just started listening to the song so that Chris, our drama teacher, could explain what the drama would look like with each part of the song. I was focused on my role and wanted God to use me to minister to people.

As the song played, I suddenly felt overwhelmed with memories and emotions that took me to the ground as I sobbed and cried like I had not done in years. It was loud crying like a child. I literally could not stop. I was seeing flashbacks of violence, arguing, and myself as a little girl alone in my room crying and afraid. I was remembering the feeling of being at school and not wanting to go home when the bell rang.

The staff member leading the practice, Chris, knew exactly what was happening. He had seen this before...

God had decided to heal me in the area of my childhood right then and there during drama practice.  He was allowing me to feel every ounce of the pain all at once, so that I would realize what I was still carrying inside of my heart.  Chris had the team lay hands on me and pray for my emotional healing.  I litterally felt the weight of the pain lifted off of me. 

So this is how it happened; first, the Holy Spirit confronted my pain, then He healed me of it.  He pulled it right out of my heart and replaced it with peace, love and an increased measure of faith to believe in the future that He had for me.  I had not intended to receive healing that day. I was just there to learn the new drama that we would be using for ministry outreach. 

And that is how Jesus works. He is a healer. He loves us too much to allow us to keep our pain bottled up inside. But first.... He confronts it. It hurts. It is uncomfortable to allow Him to go there. He reaches into a place so deep inside of our hearts that we actually forgot it was there.

What He showed me that day was that He cared about my pain, He remembered my pain, and He was with me way back then, while it was happening. He cried right along with me while I cried and He had been waiting for this day to come. He had been waiting for me to come near enough to Him, away from all of the distractions, so that my heart could be healed.

In order for Him to be able to heal us, we need to allow Him to soften our hearts. If we have hard barriers of stone built up around our heart, we are choosing to shut Him out. If we shut Him out, we shut His super-natural comfort, peace, strength and healing out as well. The good news is that He is able to tear down the walls that we have built up around our hearts.

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." -Ezekiel 36:26



There is much more to be said about what the bible has to say about our hearts. For tonight, however, lets rest on this. This is most important to Christ. He always went straight to the greatest need of a person. All of the other details He can work out on a one on one basis over time as we grow closer to Him. He knows that if He can accomplish a genuine spiritual heart transformation in us... We will know that He is real. We will know that He is a loving God. We will know Him for ourselves.


"Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion." -Hebrews 3:15


Father God,

As scary as it may feel to ask you for this... I ask that you would reveal to me the areas in my heart that need to be confronted. Show me the areas that are in need of your healing. I believe that you can heal my heart. I don't want to have a heart of stone anymore. I trust you to give me a heart of flesh. Lord, You have my permission to have your way in my heart.

In Jesus' Name I pray... Amen.

Heart Condition Intro

HEART: organ that circulates blood; the vital center of one's being, emotions and sensibilities.

I am not interested in telling people what they should or should not wear.  I am not interested in telling people what they should and should not do.  I am certainly not interested in telling people how much money they should make or not make.  But God has given me a passion to talk to people about the condition of their heart. 

At the core of every person, if you look deep enough, you find the truth.  This truth lies in their hearts.  You cannot see it from the outside.  It is not obvious to the naked eye.  Facial expressions cannot give it away.  Only God can see what truly lies in the heart of a woman or a man.

We carry all sorts of emotions inside of our hearts that are attached to memories from our past.  Our mind and our heart communicate with one another constantly.  For Example: Our mind recalls a traumatizing memory from our past and immediately in our heart, we feel ashamed, afraid, angry abandoned or insecure. 

We want someone to actually know and understand the real us.  We want them to know what is in our heart, then choose to love us anyway.  The problem is, many of us do not believe that if we allowed someone to see the entirety of what we hold in our hearts, that they would love us enough to stick around afterwards.  If someone could see my envy, fear, hurt, lust, insecurity, greed, anxiety or selfishness would they still love me?

So there are a few ways that we deal with our emotional heart condition. 

Some people build up walls of steel around their hearts.  They let no one near it for fear of exposure and vulnerability.  Trusting no one, they keep everyone at a distance.  Other people have found themselves in a cycle of giving their entire heart away and regretting it over and over again.  They hold nothing back. When they meet a new person, whether it be a romantic relationship or even a friendship, they pour out all of the details of their life onto that person.  They may secretly be hoping that by giving so much of themselves emotionally, that person will now feel like they owe them something for the investment. 

Then their are those who we wish we could be.  They love themselves.  They love others.  They have their boundaries but they have not cut off their ability to become deeply intimate with another person.  These are the people who have the ability to fall in love, get married, stay married and live as an example to those around them of what love actually looks like.  They have healthy friendships and they make great parents.

How can we go from merely surviving our emotional heart condition to walking around this earth with a strong, healthy heart, ready to love deeply but at the same time remain guarded against manipulation or abuse?  What if I told you that your heart in itself was created by God for a purpose?  It has not yet begun to serve it's actual purpose... which is why it is so messed up right now.

What I love about Jesus was the fact that when he had conversations with people, he always went straight to the condition of their heart.  The person usually wanted to talk about surface issues, but he would direct the conversation to where it really mattered... their heart. 

Why?  He loves us.  He is a mighty God who just so happens to be a heart surgeon.   It  saddens him to see us carrying around the hurt inside of our hearts that we mask with smiles.  He is a healer and he specializes in restoring what has been damaged.  He sees more for us and for our future than we could ever imagine, but we will continue to hold ourselves back from the life that He can give us until we allow Him to heal and restore our hearts.

As  I was preparing for this blog, I found WAY too much in scripture to make this a one part blog.  So I'll call this the intro and I will release it in parts.  This study is blessing me and I hope it blesses you along the way.

Lord Jesus,

Thank You for being a perfect savior and a master healer.  Thank You for loving us enough to bring this up so we can deal with it.  I pray for myself and for each person reading this blog with me... that you would search our hearts and show us what's inside.  Whatever needs to be healed Lord, I pray that you would expose it and show us how to experience healing in that area.  Let your words come through this blog and speak to those people who you had in mind when you put this on my heart.

Amen.

Yes... that is a missing finger you are staring at...

When I was 2 years old, my Dad brought me with him to the gym.  This was a small gym in a small town and they had an area for kids.  It was not an official daycare... just a table with some coloring books.  I wandered over to where he was working out and stuck my little tiny 2 year old finger in the chain of the machine which pulled it through the pulley and crushed it off.  I was flown to a hospital in San Francisco where they specialize in reattaching limbs.  They tried to reattach my finger but it was not successful.  My veins would not connect to bring blood to the damaged tip.  So I grew up missing the tip of my left middle finger.

Kids can be so mean.  I heard so many different names growing up.  I tried as hard as I could to hide it. I moved schools often, so I always had to go through the process of seeing other people find out about it for the first time.  I never knew how they would react.  Some people notice it and immediately ask about it.  That is actually my favorite response.  Other people notice it and they are afraid to ask about it, so I notice them glancing at it often.  Then there were those kids who were actually so bothered by it that they made it their daily goal to make my life a living hell because of it.

As I got older, I became such an expert at hiding it that I rarely got asked about it.

So why am I writing a blog about it?  I want to talk about insecurities today.  We all have them.  Besides my missing finger, as a child I was insecure about my weight, my clothes and my hair.  As a teenager this got worse and as an adult it has lingered with me through the years.

Nothing was consistent in my life.  Sometimes I lived with my Dad.  Sometimes I lived with my Mom. Sometimes I lived in Elk Grove.  Sometimes I lived in Stockton.  Sometimes I lived in Citrus Heights, Rancho Cordova or San Diego (if you count Summers visiting my Mom.)

One thing that was always consistent was my insecurity with myself.  How can I be good enough?  How can I make sure to be in the right group of friends at this school?  How will I be accepted?  How can I make sure to hide my finger?  How will I lose weight?  How will guys like me?  How will I dress in style when my parents cannot afford what other parents can afford?

The summer between 7th and 8th grade I was going through a crisis in my home life.  It wasn't my crisis... but it became my crisis.  I decided to go on an extreme diet.  That was one thing, in all of the craziness, that I could control.  I lost about 10-15lbs in about 2 weeks.  My first day back to school in 8th grade, it was like a was a whole new person.  All of the sudden guys were noticing me and girls wanted to hang out with me.

So I learned a lesson, a sad lie that so many believe from the enemy: 
If you want people to love you, all you have to do is be beautiful.

I repeated this same exact thing during the summer between my Sophomore and Junior year of High School.  This time I did more than just lose weight.  I also got really tan and my Mom bought me a whole new wardrobe from all of the stores that I had always wanted to shop at.  I was HOT!!!  You should have seen the looks I was getting walking down the hallways of Lincoln High School.  I felt such a sense of momentary satisfaction with this new attention I was getting.

It was harder and harder to keep off the weight and I was not willing to gain it back.  So I began binging and purging to keep off the weight.  In other words, I became bulimic.  I did it before school and after school.  Sometimes 4-5 times per day.

But... everybody loved how I looked.

I ended up getting myself into some really bad situations due to my desire for attention, affection and love.  I was so insecure that I was doing almost anything to try and prove to myself and to those around me that I was just as valuable as they were.

Fast forward to the present: This is why I do Jr. High and Sr. High Ministry.

You see, I had no one pouring into my life at this crucial age.  I was left to fend for myself in this cruel world looking for approval, acceptance and love.  I ended up in a very controlling relationship my Junior and Senior year of High School because I had finally found someone who wanted to stick by me through thick and thin.  He was my everything.  I don't mean that in a good way.  He only allowed me to be with him, that was why he was my everything.  He was jealous of his own guy friends talking to me, he was jealous of me sitting in class or talking to people at lunch.  He was even jealous of me having time with any of my girl friends.  Before I knew it, he was controlling my life.

Spending time with teenagers has caused me to reflect on these things that I went through in life.  I am not going to lie, I still struggle with insecurities.  The difference is that they have lost their power over me.  How is that possible?  Well, if you get down to the bottom of it, you will find that the very purpose of my life is to bring glory, attention and affection to Jesus Christ.

Huhhhhhh???

Well... I wake up in the morning wanting to praise God and wanting to know how I can help others to desire Him as much as I do.  So with that purpose in mind... it really doesn't matter that I have gained 10 pounds, I have been breaking out lately or that I am missing a finger.  I find joy in the fact that I have been bringing glory to God and He is pleased with me.

I shower my love and affection on Him and He showers His love and affection on me.

God has shown himself to me in such a way that I feel secure in Him.  I feel secure because He loves me.  He is my Father and I am therefore, royalty.  This body was meant to be despised because I am only borrowing it for a brief time until I finally get to be with my savior for eternity and he gives me a new heavenly body, more glorious than anything I can imagine at this time.  Someday I will be made perfect for ever and ever.

But that someday is not today.  It is not on this earth.  I will never be perfect on this earth.  I would hate to waste my life away trying to be beautiful, while truly becoming uglier and uglier on the inside.

You know the crazy part?  I see pictures of myself in the past and think, "Man, I looked hot back then."       But I also remember how I felt about myself at that time and the demons that I was struggling with.  It was not worth it.  Now I don't fit that same cookie cutter mold of beauty that I used to think was necessary, but guess what?

I feel beautiful.  I feel sooooooooooooooooooooo lovely and beautiful.  My husband loves me.  My daughter loves me.  Most importantly, God Himself loves me and He is pleased with me.  I hang onto that.  It is now okay with me if someone calls me fat or makes fun of my partially missing finger.  It is okay with me because my security is not found in the opinions of outsiders.

My security is unshakable and it is found in Jesus Christ.