Let me just start by saying, I've been pretty hardcore my whole life. My grandmother use to tell me that whatever came up didn't have to come out. I didn't sugar coat stuff to spare people, I always felt like complete honesty was always best. I saw crying as a weakness. It didn't solve anything and it always gave me a headache. Until......
As God broke down my walls. those were the first bricks to come down. Everything makes me cry. It wasn't that I didn't empathize with people or I wasn't compassionate, I just wasn't as sensitive as I should/could have been. Now, I feel like I'm hyper sensitive. I still don't like showing emotion but when I hear someone's story of how they overcame, a testimony of how the Lord blessed or delivered them, I get a little teary eyed, lol. I have realized that when the Holy Spirit has or is moving, I get a chill and tears instantly form. It was a little nerve wracking at first. I'm still not completely comfortable with it, but I can't stop it.
I said all of that to say, that doing kingdom work, you can't be afraid of being vulnerable or being transparent. That most humiliating or embarrassing issue you had may be exactly what someone else needs to hear to be delivered. Writing my story has made me more vulnerable than ever. My transparency about the old me will bless someone else. So it is with the Lord's work. Every catastrophe or horrible situation you've encountered was meant for someone else. If you made it through and are stronger for it, it was meant to help someone else make it through. You never know how your story can pull someone from the brink of giving up completely. Your light may be the very thing that brings someone out of the darkness.
Like I said, I don't care what anyone thinks about the old me because as scripture says, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things," 1 Corinthians 13:11. I'm not the old me and there is nothing you can say to make me feel ashamed or guilty, no more than the enemy did to keep me in my sin. Growing up doesn't always mean just stepping up to the plate and handling your business. It also means, accepting the past for what it was and leaving it behind. It doesn't mean forget, because we all know some Christians that seemed to have forgotten all their sins before they gave their lives to the Lord. And! Unfortunately, they don't share their story with anyone to help deliver them, they would rather gossip and point fingers and judge and condemn. I found that to be the case in my childhood church, one of the reasons I could no longer attend.
Here I am however, having been a single mother raising 4 children alone, taking care of my mother for years, taking care of other peoples loved ones as a profession, and not needing a man to complete me. My Father supplied all of our needs despite my history and all my sins. Here I am, a vessel, unclean and sinful, still being used for His glory despite what people said and thought. God is awesome! My prayer is only that we all help the person next to us, when given the opportunity. You never know what someone else is struggling with or has been through.
Take stock in what you have and give thanks for how the Lord delivered you, then do it for the next person. What can it hurt? Your pride? How other people look at you? The only thing that truly matters is what the Lord thinks of you. No one on earth has a heaven or hell to place you in, so walk boldly in the face of the nay sayers and haters and do what the Lord has placed in your heart. "Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the Lord," Jeremiah 1:8
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