I spent some of Saturday reading a book about depression in the Church: the way it’s mishandled, misinformed, misunderstood (God Can You Love Me, by Chrystal Hansen).  I came away from the weekend with this beautiful, hope-full reminder:

God will stop at nothing less than our TOTAL healing. When God does something, He does it fully. He sent His rebel-rousing Son, Jesus to make us whole, and He will restore us.

The first step towards our wholeness in any broken part of our lives (body, mind, soul, spirit, emotion, etc.) comes down to our honesty. If we can’t open up to God, lay bare what we really feel before the heavenly Physician, He will never be free to enter into our wounds with us, lance the infections, and bind up our brokenness.

If you’re angry with God, be angry. It cannot shake His love for you.

Disappointed with your parents? Feel it. Let God enter it with you.

Whatever we’ve held away from God, our own minds, and others–like the frightened child who hides their bleeding finger under their hand after an accident with a knife–we need to turn into the light.

I know this won’t be easy or fast, but I’m tired of being afraid, tired of emotional roller coasters, and deeply aware, again, of how broken I am.  Man with the Wounded Hands, come with Your searching eyes and sink into my heart….

The other morning on my drive to work I was thinking about Revelation 12:11:   “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto death.”

OK. Let me start over.  I wasn’t actually musing on scripture. Really, I was thinking about (stressing over? grinding through? beating my brain with?) all the situations I’m smack dab in the middle of that seem hopeless, mixed up, impossible messes.

Myself being the biggest mess of them all. I’m pretty sick of me right now.

I was trying desperately to flip my perspective on life, see it in a different light, and then I noticed something. That verse in Revelation says they overcame by 3 things.

I want to overcome. Right now, I want to overcome a lot of stuff. Fear, doubt, exhaustion, laziness, the school year. But in the end, at those last minutes of this age, I also want to OVERCOME.

#1. I’ve got the blood of the Lamb. Swimming in it.

#3. I’m learning to live not for the love of my life but for the Love of God.

but

#2. What’s my testimony and where do I get one that will be the kind that’s strong enough to overcome?

The word testimony in that verse comes from the word that means martyr. It means a witness. It means we’ll overcome by speaking about what we’ve seen. How we’ve seen God move. What we’ve seen God do. For us. In us.

And where are we going to see these things? Where do we get a chance to “grow” a testimony? In ridiculous, dumb, drawn out, awful situations.

Jesus is the Word. He’s all the fullness of God. He is the Word of our testimony, the evidence we present before the judge in every situation where we, by God’s grace, are entitled to JUSTICE.

The Lord gently reminded me that these things that I’m wrestling with–the literal sweat and tears in every day these days–they’re His gift to me. He’s building me a testimony. He’s allowing me to store up a story I’m going to speak for the sake of victory in the perfect day.

I’m going to overcome. I know the end of the story.

I was writing about the new year tonight (every year, the last few days of the year, I’m all reflective and optimistic and sentimental), and Ephesians 2:10 came to mind. I know it by heart this way:

“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Simple enough: God set up some jobs for me to do before I was born. Then, He made me to do them through Jesus.

No! It’s much more lovely than that, and the poet in me has discovered a new beautiful understanding of this tiny scripture gem. Here’s my paraphrase of the verse after digging into the Greek roots of this little phrase.

“You and I are His “poima’s,” God’s handcrafted creative works which He shaped and formed in the anointed Savior. We are created to be occupied by pleasant, happy creative works, which He got ready for us earlier. In fact, He prepared them the way a king prepares the roads he’s going to journey down before he leaves–sending someone down to level the roads and clear the way so that every path will be passable. God did this for us so that we can spend our lives walking out those good and pleasant things He has prepared for us.”

His poima! I am His poem, carefully, painstakingly chosen, shaped word by word, phrase by phrase, line by line. And all so I could fill my life with amazing things He’s not only prepared for us to do, but set up for us so that we’ll always be successful, safe, and secure in Him.

If this is true, if this is who I am, then life, my friends, is looking good!

A few days ago, I opened a link to a search page through craig’s list.  The rest is sad, virus-ridden computer history.

Last night, as I was running anti-ware programs to search deep into my computer in a (useless) attempt to find the hidden files and complete a system restore, I was reminded of Psalm 139:23: ”Search me, O God, and know my heart.”

I want to get quiet before the Lord, sometime very soon, and allow Him to run His anti-ware-Holy-Spirit over my heart.  When He finds the virus-ridden files, the lies, that are embedded deep within my soul, I pray He’ll root out and destroy each one, and–as He says in Psalm 23–”RESTORE my soul.”

I tend to think a lot…and if you like to read, come back here often and I’ll let you in on some of my thoughts…but just a few! There are way too many to put on paper each day.

L, Bekah