Often when people come into the kingdom of God, there are changes in their lives that He makes immediately so to speak. For Princess, it was her drinking. As much as she loved to drink every day, her taste for liquor and beer was gone. She tried to continue out of habit, but she couldn’t get past the first sip. The good thing is she didn’t fight it; in fact she was grateful because the Lord replaced her love for drinking each day after work, with a love of reading her Bible instead.
Princess also had night blindness and didn’t drive after dark, but one night there was a family emergency and she remembers praying all the way there for God to help her see, and as she was parking she realized her vision had been corrected and she could see as clearly as she did during the day. That Wednesday, she started going to evening Bible study.
At the time Princess didn’t realize that these were great things that had happened in her life because she was lonely. She had to cut all her drinking buddies loose, and didn’t seem to find much pleasure in gossiping on the phone about others anymore. She wanted to talk to someone about what she was reading in the Bible and really didn’t understand. Her friends didn’t want to hear about Jesus, and they didn’t like the change that they saw in her. She felt isolated and more unloved then ever at this time, but in her heart of hearts she didn’t want to go back to the life that she had been living, she wanted to stick with Jesus and her new church family.
Like so many others who come to church looking for Christians to offer something different, she too was very disappointed in what she found. She found mean spirited and unkind people who said they loved the Lord. She found gossipers and could smell the liquor and breath mint mixture on people every Sunday morning, but she also had found a Pastor who loved the Lord and was bold in this love. He was fairly new to the congregation and Princess came at a time when there was going to be big change. So each Sunday she heard the Word of God in its purest form. Her Pastor was not there to please anyone other than God, and he preached for people to learn and change. He inspired her to read her Bible every day and even check behind him on what he was teaching. He was a most excellent teacher who taught with a fire and passion she had never seen before. Princess was blessed in the fact that she was a reader, because over the years God used that to fill her with so many good things about Him.
When did Princess become a person who loved to read? It was at a young age. She spent a lot of time in her room reading when growing up. It was a form of escape. She frequented the library, spent money on comic books, and had an aunt who supplied her with books. Her mother often punished her for the least little infraction and being sent to her room without supper and no TV was her number one punishment and being beaten. Being banished to her room for weeks on end was number two. I share this because in the midst of the chaos of her childhood, things were being instilled that would one day benefit her. Also because of some of the abuse in her life, Princess grew up to be a woman who would not allow men to physically abuse her. It was set, if a man ever tried to harm her, he was going down. When we get to the end of this series in 2 weeks, I will talk more about how there is good to be found in the midst of the rubble.
When the Wednesday night Bible study started to turn more into a mid week service, Princess started attending my Tuesday evening Women’s Bible study. That was almost 20 years ago. At the time she joined we were studying certain women of the Bible, and the greatest thing she learned in that session was that she no longer had to do it all. Like many women she had bought into the world’s system of “I can do it all, because I am Woman!” She didn’t have a clue that God had an order and that in His order of things, it was the man’s responsibility to be the head and not the woman. She didn’t know that she didn’t have to carry the weight of her world on her shoulders and smile while doing it. She saw that there was hope to put some of this stuff on God.
Princess never really got to make amends with her mother the way she had hoped. Her mother never told her she loved her even after Princess reached out to her mother in obedience to God’s command of honoring her. When her mother passed, Princess in a sense was very relieved that she would never be able to hurt her again. But at the time she didn’t know that this was just the beginning of picking through the rubble of their relationship. She thought it was done and she could now move on. But in trying to move on, she still dragged old hurts and wounds that had never healed with her. If you have ever worked in a hospital or been around someone with a wound full of puss that was draining, then you know there is an odor that is not pleasant at all. And if it is infected it can be almost unbearable. That is the way our infected unhealed wounds smell to the Lord. They stink! And when we hold on to this stuff, it just stinks up our lives and causes us to be offensive to those around us.
Life was still very difficult for Princess, because of the deep root of rejection instilled in her. She still felt very unlovable and didn’t trust God. Life had taught her that people were not trustworthy at all! It had taught her that she had to protect herself because no one else cared enough to do that for her. So over the years she had built a wall around her heart and lived in a house built out of pride. She will be the first to tell you how very proud she was and the things that God allowed in her life to humble her. Did it come over night? No, but the good news is that it did come.
Like many new Christians, Princess became a Jesus person. She read, and reread the New Testament I don’t know how many times, but she didn’t read or see the need for the Old Testament in the beginning. But after attending Women’s Bible Study, she began to enjoy the Old Testament and realized why she could never really understand Romans. She would often say how it seemed like Greek to her. Reading the Old Testament forced her to look at a God she was very distrustful of. A God who gave her such a mean and hateful mother. A God who allowed people to do such horrible things to her as a child. A God who created her so unlovable that no one wanted her. She had to acknowledge that she could no longer hide from Him.
Princess began the long road of learning to trust God. She never knew her father and since men abused her as a child, she found it almost impossible to understand God as a father. But since the Lord knows the most intricate parts of our makeup this was not news to Him, and she began a study of God has Husband. She had never been married, so this area was a blank slate. If you ask her today when it was she went from relying on God as her Husband to seeing God has her Father? She really doesn’t remember exactly, but in learning to trust God she was able to make the coalition between the two. And as her trust for God grew and she watched Him be true to His Word that He would take the ashes of her life and make them a thing of beauty, she begin to let go of her grudge against Him, her mother and anyone else who had ever hurt her. Princess found herself in the valley of compassion as she realized all that God had done for her in the midst of the chaos of her broken life. And in the valley of compassion, she found herself shedding tears for a mother who clearly was never happy or had peace in her own life. In the valley of compassion, Princess found the freedom to begin to let go….
In 2 weeks we will look at the valley of compassion and all that it has to offer in the way of letting go and being able to live the good life that Yeshua died to give us here on this earth.
My prayer is that the past few weeks have helped you to see that there might be areas in your life that need to be sorted through, and purged. And with that you now have a desire to let go of those things which have kept you in bondage and allow beauty to replace the ashes of your life.
Be blessed,
Pat
I will return on Saturday, May 1st.
Monday's Blog: Sharon will be back with her pearls on "Financial Wisdom" for us"
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