Saturday, November 22, 2008

Healing through Hurt.

9:27 PM by Christi Bowman

My GOD is an EXCEEDINGLY MAGNIFICENT GOD and He has been BEYOND EXCESSIVELY GOOD to me. His ways are not my ways nor are His thoughts my thoughts. He is so completely unconventional yet He is so boundlessly wise. He makes all things beautiful, even hardened hearts like mine, in His time.

My husband refers to it as the "perfect storm". I had just completed my first Spirit filled weekend away from home. I was reading "Pagan Christianity", and my home church had turned on me. I was ready to walk away from church as I knew it and begin seeking church as I knew it could be.

In walked GOD.

He started by giving me Revelations 3:7-13, and I thought, YES, God is on my side! Then I read a post by AnitaO, on another blog I occasionally write on..."I am Done With" and I found myself being deeply convicted by the lack of love I was feeling towards the "church". I began to pray for love; knowing He would give it to me because I was asking in His name for something He wanted me to have.

As I was praying for love I was dealt a devastating blow by a friend already involved in this present set of circumstances and I felt my heart physically turn against her. I felt my friend becoming dead to me. I was talking on the phone with my husband at the time and I was able to verbally describe every ugly emotion I was feeling, which helped to bring the condition of my heart more into the light. My husband was passionately advocating that we go to her so that the relationship could be restored and I was refusing on the grounds of how badly I had been hurt.

At that same moment I was also being convicted by how I felt and how wrong my feelings were. I was surprised by how easy it was to feel that way and how right it felt to justify it. I knew that this was something I had experienced many times in my life, but it was as if a wall had been torn down and I was experiencing it for the first time as it really was. I was able to see how damaging this scenario was to my spirit. These emotions had become my defense mechanism.

I have been seriously hurt, as a child, by most of the adults in my life. And, as a child, I had no control over any of the painful situations I had found myself in. I was never allowed to voice an opinion or discuss, with any of my perpetrators, how bad the pain felt. I had developed a way to cope with all that pain and not let it penetrate me. My heart had learned how to harden itself to the pain and not allow the people who hurt me back in so that they could hurt me again. In my opinion it was a brilliant defense mechanism, but to God it was rubbish and it needed to go.

Up until this time, if asked to describe myself, I would have said that I dislike people, but through this I was able to see that it is not dislike for people that keeps me from them but it is fear. I don't dislike people I fear them because of what they have done to me in the past. "God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control (2 Tim 1:7)."

How unconventional yet wise was it of Him to walk me through the very thing I fear most, pain, to heal my heart.

Zechariah 6:15b (MSG)
All this follows as you put your minds to a life of responsive obedience to the voice of your God."

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