His Mighty Hand

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. Really, The difference between healing and not healing lies in the source. 

When We long for the heaviness to lift and feel peace

Turn to God. 

When 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 remedy, our healing.

Thinking heavily these past few days about deep agony, grief, resulting from from our own choices, sins against God,  the result of someone else’s actions. 

Jesus how this world needs You! And here You are among every piece of creation waiting for us to turn our gaze to You! 

If our sin doesn't disqualify us from grace, maybe it QUALIFIES US. 

And it is not enough for us to say we WERE blind. We must also be able to say that now we CAN see. 

Know That God is certainly not done with us, but that He's working in our hearts. 

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 stop sharing Him with others because our life has been changed, Jesus is the only real freedom we can have here in this life and for eternity at His side. 

Wile we read about tragedies elsewhere that stop us in our tracks there are people in our own families, in our workplaces, on our block! Streets! Communities WHOS VERY LIVES are closed off from God! And they need Him now. Today. Everyday. 

He is ready to call them, us, His children, to fill us each with Holy Spirit and give us a completely new life. He promises to replace our guilt and shame with His joy! 

Remember too, while thinking on these things, and giving our hearts to Christ for restoration, let’s remember (and pray for each other) 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.  Our salvation won’t mean we will not struggle anymore while here. 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.

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. Matthew 6:9-14 NET

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 self-condemnation Monday through Saturday which then puts walls around us often withholding grace from those we encounter. 

It’s not hard news, bad news, complicated news, or frightening news. It’s good news. GOOD NEWS OF THE GOSPEL.

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 and it doesn’t mean we will never remember the trauma we experienced or the damage we have caused because we feel like our past has left us too broken to be of any use. 

Jeremiah 30:17 NET Yes, I will restore you to health. I will heal your wounds. I, the LORD, affirm it! For you have been called an outcast, Zion, whom no one cares for. 

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.

Maybe you have been abused, a piece of you is kept locked away from anyone else. But God sees it. He loves you through it, He is grieving with you because it happened. We might feel so used and ashamed that God could never love someone like us, but my friends we are not alone in those feelings, sinners forgiven by God are saints who have gone before us, chosen and loved by God. 

When crushed by the world, or at the hands of another, or by our own sin God puts us back together - and there’s more than the 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. 

He wants to reach down into the innermost parts of our soul where no one else can go to mend and fill us with grace.  These are works only God can do; no human has the ability to fill the void and depths of the heart. To rid us of shame, guilt, sorrow, pain, insecurity, and more.