Casting It All

And God will exalt you in due time, if you humble yourselves under His mighty hand by casting all your cares on Him because He cares for you. 1 Peter 5:6-7 NET

Proper healing doesn’t come when we bypass the process and seek the world's comforts. Rather, it comes when we seek God. The difference between healing and not healing lies in the source. We long for the heaviness to lift and feel peace. turn to God. We desire to feel free from the shame and condemnation. Turn to God. Can you imagine what it feels like to experience wholeness and restoration? You will know it when you to God. He’s the answer to our healing.  

Our sin doesn't disqualify us from grace, it QUALIFIES US. It's not enough for us to say we WERE blind. We must also be able to say that now we CAN see.

That God is certainly not done with us, but that He's working in our hearts. We can't claim to know God and not be found worshiping Him - He is too great.  Share Jesus Christ and His impact in our lives with others.  If we truly believe what we say we believe, we won’t be able to help sharing it with others because our life has been changed, it's the only real freedom we can have here on earth.

He is also ready to do more than that, He is ready to call us His children, to fill us with Holy Spirit and give us a completely new life. He promises to replace our guilt and shame with His joy!  Our salvation won’t mean we will not struggle anymore. On the contrary, because we have now decided to live for God, follow His direction in our careers, hobbies, families, we may face trials and temptations that we’ve never even faced before.  For a Christian, repentance, restoration and forgiveness are not a license to sin, but a means to restore our relationship with God. Repentance is a lifestyle. The greatest evidence of this is when we show the world is that we are constantly willing to submit ourselves to the Lordship of Christ and allow Him to change the things in our life that do not bring honor to Him. 

I am so very humbled and grateful that we can look into our own lives, give up all pride, confess our sins and leave them behind.

Matthew 6:9-14 NET So pray this way: Our Father in heaven, may Your name be honored, may Your kingdom come, may Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we ourselves have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

It’s a message of unconditional and unending acceptance by God, based on His grace and received through faith in Jesus. I’ve discovered that it’s one thing to agree with grace or even recite verses about grace, but it’s another to truly understand it and live it. Honestly, that’s where we can tend to miss the message the most. We listen to grace on Sunday and then live with guilt, law, and condemnation Monday through Saturday often withholding grace from those we encounter. It’s not hard news, bad news, complicated news, or frightening news. It’s good news. The message of Jesus is one of hope, of joy, of peace, of freedom.... let us continue to be faithful to Him who created all things because what does how we feel have to do with Who we are serving.

When suffering, struggling, reeling in emotion and sadness the answer is often to throw ourselves into the day ahead, into the roles we need to be in.... parent, sister, friend, employee. So even though could be difficult, choose to smile, speak friendly, with care and concern ...... choose to let our feelings catch up with our actions for we are NOT going to feel better until we do better.

Take that step, ask for Holy Spirit to walk along side, forgive, surrender the tight grip of control, our moving forward from this point requires accepting God’s grace and walking in the freedom He has given us from bondage that held us tied to bad habits, addictions, damaging behaviours. Do that and you will be one step closer to flourishing, planted..... Its what Jesus Christ has done, and still continues to do for any who ask it of Him. 

He takes a tattered, broken, marked person and makes them better than ever before. When Jesus goes to work on us we become unrecognizable to the people who knew us before.  God’s definition of restoration doesn’t just mean putting us back together, but it means to go above and beyond in making us better than before. We’re always in far better shape after Jesus has gone to work on us than before. It doesn't mean we won’t suffer or feel the growing pains because we will but  God will restore us. That’s not a “maybe” or “if He feels like it.” It’s a promise that the Lord will restore His people to a better place. We might feel like our past has left us too broken to be of any use. We might feel so used and ashamed that God could never use someone like us, we are not alone in those feelings, saints have gone before us, chosen and loved by God. But these are lies the enemy wants us to believe to keep us down so that we won’t fulfill God’s purpose for our lives.

Pray! Deny these thoughts and know that when God puts us back together there’s more than an external picture of being put back together like a broken vase, God does an internal working in our heart, soul, and mind that is a healing of sorts as well.   He wants to reach down into the innermost parts of our soul where no one else can go to mend and fill with grace. To rid us of shame, guilt, sorrow, pain, insecurity, and more. These are works only God can do; no human has the ability to fill the void and depths of the heart.