Do Not Have A Spirit of Fear

I sit here tonight wondering.  I wonder why it has taken me so long to see the truth.  The bible says that the truth will set you free.  So, I am going to take that step and receive that freedom. 

          In recent posts, I have shared what God has revealed to me in my personal bible study.  That is all well and good, but God has spoken something to me and no matter how hard I fight Him.  He has won.  He has told me that to be truly free, I have to face my past and let it go.  I always feel shame when I think about who I was.  I say who I was because when I accepted Christ as my personal savior He made me new in Him.  I am now a new creation, spirit-filled, and loved by an almighty, powerful God.  All of my sins are forgiven.  They are forgiven as far as the east is from the west.  If you can calculate how far that is, you are good.  To say the least, it is a very great distance and I am happy for it.  I have become clean in the blood of the lamb. 

          Exodus 14:13,14 says, “ Do not be afraid.  Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today…….The Lord will fight for you; you only need to be still.”  Before I read this I was always moving.  If I run fast enough my past won’t catch up to me.  My sins were forgiven by God, but I never really forgave myself.  The enemy (Satan) has wheedled his way into my mind to condemn me for my past actions.  If I allow him to continue to have power in my mind then I will never be free.  So, here goes.

          I have been afraid to reveal all of myself because I fear that people will think less of me.  That, instead of seeing the person I have become, they will be stuck on who I was.  God let me know in a not so gentle way, that people are going to talk about me until the day I die.  They talked about Jesus.  They ridiculed Him.  They condemned Him.  They hung Him on a cross and there He died; the one person on this earth completely free from any sin or temptation.  SO, if they would do this to Jesus, who am I to think I will get off so easy?  If I carry this burden any farther, I am allowing the enemy to rest on my doorstep; an obstacle in my path to trip on every day. Have you ever been walking through the house and stubbed your toe on something?  Think about how painful that is.  We hop around until we find someplace to sit down and cradle our wounded foot.  Instead of doing what God has intended us to do, we are sitting on the couch having a pity party over our hurt toe.  The enemy keeps us in a place God didn’t ever intend for us to be. I don’t know about you, but I am ready to fight the enemy. His reign of terror is over in my life.   

          I am going to start my story in my teenage years.  I was the cliché of the teenage girl with no self-esteem.  I was chunky and tom-boyish.  I had very few friends and the ones I did have had more issues than I did.  They also tended to be involved in things that weren’t of very good moral virtue.  I started drinking when I was in middle school.  I started doing drugs in high school.  I also started having sex then, too.  I had always sworn to myself that I was going to save myself for marriage.  Well, that did not happen. Add drugs and alcohol and teenage boys and you have an equation that is not so pretty.  I wanted to be liked.  I wanted to be loved.  I thought that if I followed what the crowd was doing, I would be popular.  And I was, but not in a very nice way.  You see, you reap what you sow.  When you lower your morals, it takes you a very long time to correct the impression you gave.  I can still run in to people that I knew from high school and they are amazed at the change in me.  Some don’t believe it is really me.  Now, I always made good grades and I graduated with honors from both high school and nursing school. But, I was not remembered for any of that.  I was the party girl who liked to have a good time.  If you said jump, I asked, “How high?”  

          I believed that if I followed these people I surrounded myself with that life would change for me.  I would turn into what “the world” considered perfect.  I would be model thin, drop-dead beautiful, athletic, and I would date the cutest jock in school.  Everyone would envy me and I would just be the best ever.  By the time I realized that what I expected the world to give me was an illusion, I was already entrenched in a vicious cycle.

I was out of high school, I had graduated nursing school, and I became a hardworking nurse, which was good. I didn’t do drugs anymore But, I also was an alcoholic whose private life was a wreck.  I kept putting myself in terrible relationships and situations.  It was like this pattern I created for myself was the only life I would allow myself to live.  I believed I had faith at times, but God was not welcome in my life at this point.  I was too afraid that He wouldn’t want me either.  It took me being at the bottom of a dark, dark pit to see that God was the only way.  I couldn’t do it by myself anymore.  My shoulders and back couldn’t carry the burden anymore.  The weight pressing down on me wouldn’t even allow me to breathe.  I was in the midst of horrible depressions.  Suffice to say it was the lowest point of my life, but it took me being at that point to see the TRUTH.

No matter how badly I had missed it.  God still loved me.  He would forgive me if I asked Him to.  He would take me in the warmest embrace I have ever felt and light up the darkest corners of my life.  He took that person that I was and washed her away.  He stood me up, brushed away my tears and led me by the hand to the end of that dark tunnel. 

          Today, in church Brother Don recapped our last few messages.  We have had some good words from God lately and Brother Don wanted us to really see what was being told to us.  Before we even got to Brother Don’s message though, the Holy Spirit was working.  We started singing Hillsongs’ song, “Lead me to the Cross”:

Savior I come
Quiet my soul remember
Redemptions hill
Where Your blood was spilled
For my ransom
Everything I once held dear
I count it all as lost

Lead me to the cross
Where Your love poured out
Bring me to my knees
Lord I lay me down
Rid me of myself
I belong to You
Lead me, lead me to the cross

You were as I
Tempted and trialed
You are
Te word became flesh
Bore my sin and death
Now you're risen

To your heart
To your heart
Lead me to your heart
Lead me to your heart

          As we started singing, I felt the Holy Spirit in me.  God was speaking.  He told me again, Just like when I was in my pit, that I have to “rid me of myself”.  Even though I am walking with God, I still miss it.  But when I look back at who I was and look in the mirror now.  I realize that God is amazing.  His love is so amazing.  He took a broken little girl and made her into a brand new person.  He has taken all the hurt and helped me heal.  He has shown me such a love that it is almost impossible to believe. 

          I shared this today because I know that someone out there has been where I was.  I want them to know that they are loved, that their Heavenly Father cries when they cry and that His arms are aching to hold them.  That no matter how bad you think you have been that there is forgiveness and mercy in the Father’s hands.  You don’t have to be afraid anymore.  I pray that peace finds you and that your eyes will be opened to the possibility of a light-filled life.  God Bless,

                            Kristine