Category Archives: Inner Healing

If You’re Feeling Empty

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Sometimes, the times when you feel the most alone, are the times when God is freeing you up of false support systems so that you can fully come to sense His presence, His power, His love for you, above all else.

This past year I’ve seen the truth of this in a whole new way. At first it felt rather bleak, when things, dreams, and people got whittled out of my life. Then it got quiet. Distractions were few. God was persistent in letting me know there are few people who genuinely have your back and also have the power to lead you forward anyhow, so He repeatedly hinted that it might be best for me to get used to this new cozy relationship He wanted to have with me. So I finally responded with, “Okay, let’s do this then, God.” I didn’t have much left to lose, and I wasn’t expecting a lot. Maybe a bit of insight or some needed wisdom.

But then God blew me away this past year, in how He Himself made up for every lost and every broken thing in my life. 

Maybe you’re at a point of loss right now. The closed doors you’ve experienced in relationships or opportunities have been devastating, and you might be wondering where God is, in all that.

That’s what happened to Naomi, in the book of Ruth. Widowed and grieving over the loss of her two sons, she finds herself returning to her home town, with one daughter in law who refuses to leave her side– a daughter in law named Ruth, who had suffered loss too, but had not lost faith in the God of Israel that she had come to trust in.

And when Naomi utters how broken she feels and how she thinks God’s hand has gone out against her, she was speaking that all the while that Love was leading her home to Bethlehem, house of bread– and the place where important, life changing, prophetic fulfillment was about to take place in her life. Where a great filling up was about to take place, and literally spill over in generations to come.

You may feel empty right now, but God wants you to know, He’s looking to FILL you up….to overflowing. You don’t even have to be able to see how God could do such a thing. You just need to know that He CAN and that He WILL. Just open your eyes, and open your heart to Him as well. You may be in a scarcity mindset, but God operates so opposite of that. He’s waiting for you to take just a step closer to Him, open your eyes a little wider,  and discover that He knows how to redeem every last and every lost thing in your life.

“Do you not perceive it?  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19

Something beautiful is about to rise from the ashes of your past.

Because Your Redeemer LIVES.

 

This Is My Story: The Power Of Your Testimony!

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Many Christians have had the blessing of being raised in godly, loving homes with plenty of Sunday school and church meetings. Their lives can look nicely packaged and clean, while yours, as a new believer with a rough background, looks like you’ve come from a war zone. But never underestimate the power of your story, no matter how much you’ve had to overcome.

Your testimony is all about the tests you’ve gone through and the faithfulness of God to bring you through them. It’s not just about what you’ve had to overcome, but how God entered into your story. What God did for you, He will do for others. And it’s time to share your story.

Don’t Be Ashamed Of Your Past

No matter how painful or dysfunctional your past is, remember that all of us can say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” If you have pretty serious “offenses” in your past, they are not any better or worse than the sins and mistakes of anyone else’s past in the eyes of God.

The Bible tells us that we all have come short of the glory of God. But likewise, we all have received grace upon grace from Him. Lift up your eyes when you share your testimony of where you come from, knowing that God redeems every one of our lives from the pit. Never be ashamed of the power of God’s provision to take a painful past and give it a promising future. That’s your testimony and you’re sticking to it.

Don’t Share Every Detail

Be discreet with certain details of your story, as they would affect others involved in your past or as it might affect you in your future. This may seem like I’m negating what I shared in point #1. But there is a wisdom and a timing in sharing graphic and troubling scenes from your past.

Know that there’s a price to pay with your testimony once you go public. Are you ready to start talking about certain painful turning points in your life? How will your sharing of these stories affect any others who were part of your past? Is sharing specific details of your past even necessary? If you’re not comfortable getting into specifics, you can discreetly share things in whatever measure of candidness you feel is appropriate.

Look For Those Who Need Your Story

Of course, you are not ashamed of what God has done in your life. And we all have a testimony of sorts, because we all have a yesterday when we were not what we are today, because of the grace of God. But being willing to share your testimony also can involve being willing to get before certain segments of the population that specifically could benefit from your story of His intervention in your life.

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Read more at Christian Mingle Believe and leave your comments here!

More Than Chills and Signs: How To Experience God’s Presence

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Here’s the good news for those of you who have gotten frustrated in your walk with God because you don’t feel you are disciplined enough: growing in your faith is not just about discipline.

I’ve spent over 40 years pursuing a relationship with God that certainly involved what some call the main “spiritual disciplines” of prayer, Bible study, accountability and fellowship. There’s no doubt that these are crucial for a healthy walk with the Lord. But as I look back on some key turning points in my spiritual walk, there were definitely times when I was just spiritually needy and emotionally desperate – and I experienced God’s life-changing powerful presence.

More than giving us chills and supernatural signs, God wants to meet our deepest emotional needs in an encounter with Him. While you can’t build your faith on feelings alone, they nonetheless are part of experiencing God’s presence. Emotional hunger and honest expression of your feelings can ignite a wave of spiritual renewal.

Be Hungry For God

Be open to God “showing up” in times when you desperately need Him.

I remember one pivotal moment in my life when this occurred. I was coming home from my junior year of study abroad in Spain. It had been a long year, exciting but also lonely, and I had battled anxiety and anorexia. I was feeling very vulnerable as I sat in the airport in Madrid, hungrily reading a devotional my mother had sent me.

The airport speakers were broadcasting all these songs in Spanish and I was reading my devotional in English when all of a sudden something amazing occurred: just as I was reading the words about how God is like a bridge over troubled waters, the American song “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” breaks through the loudspeakers.

I raised my eyes to the speakers, incredulous that God was speaking to me in literally my own language! I heard the message loud and clear that God was saying: “Lauren, I am with you, everywhere, and always.” Tears streamed down, and joy and hope welled up in me. I can remember and actually “feel” that experience, even to this day.

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(Continue reading this article at Christian Mingle Believe)

Good Grief: Mourning a Past Relationship

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There’s nothing as heartbreaking as experiencing the loss of someone you love. Many people struggle with the delicate balance of moving on from their loss and the need to fully grieve this painful and complicated experience. Grief is a natural and necessary human response to loss that includes a range of feelings and reactions, from denial to anger to depression.

Our loved ones may understand our need to grieve when we experience the death of a loved one, though they might never know the depths of what we’re feeling. But the loss of a relationship due to breakup can also be hard to work through if people don’t “see” the impact the loss is having on you. Well-meaning friends might tell you to “move on” or “chin up” and your sense of grief can intensify under this type of subtle criticism. But it’s good for us to work through our grief and fully express our pain while still embracing hope for our future.

Love And Loss

One of the hardest things about loving someone is that we can often love someone who we know we shouldn’t marry. Whether it’s not having the same spiritual convictions, or whether there is some type of toxicity they bring to the relationship that you know will put you under, you can very much yearn and for someone that at the same time you know you must give up.

On the other hand, you may have been “released” from a relationship in a cruel way, blinded by the quick cut-off. Regardless of how the loss occurred, you may be in the throws of grief and wondering if there is a way out of the dark sad feelings you’re experiencing.

The following four steps can help you process your grief and come out on the other side of healing.

Feel It Fully

Allow yourself to feel and fully process what happened. This is an area most of us are not good at. To feel the pain of a loss is not something we want to soak in for long. But not only do we need to acknowledge these painful feelings, we have to also process them and work through them. We have to try to take the emotional reaction out for a moment, and critically look at what happened and evaluate all the facets of the loss and how it occurred. This takes time.

This is when grief can become a slowly realized truth.

Recognize God’s Love

Grieving and feeling sad over a loss does not mean you are not trusting God. Grieving is a healthy part of loving and of living, and God is the author of life. He does not expect us to act like robots, minimize pain, deny its reality in our life, or over-spiritualize and try to move quickly to the “victory.”

Grief is dealing with the truth of loss and hurt in the light of God’s love.

Take Time

Work through the resulting painful effects of loss in your life today. It’s not helpful to fill our hearts with replacements for what we find painful to deal with. Avoid making big, life-impacting decisions that might just be symptoms of your grief crying out and not reflections of your true self.

Be patient with yourself; acting impetuously out of grief will often bring you more hurt and loss.

Seek Joy

Allow yourself to feel joy when it rises. For many, it seems impossible to grieve over the loss of someone and still be happy at the simple blessings of life. Grief ebbs and flows; it may lessen for a season and return when it gets triggered by a memory. Feeling grief and joy is a complicated but natural experience.

Even in your Grief, allow for moments of joy.

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Read more at https://www.christianmingle.com/believe/mourning-your-past

Breaking the Stronghold of Fear

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See these women here? They’re about to change their world for good.

Because the way to bring positive change to the world at large is to first bring change  and healing to our personal world, our troubled souls, our deep hidden chambers of the heart. It’s the toughest work we’ll ever do, dealing with our past, our fears, our hurts and pain.

But nothing says  “Womens Liberation” better than to be freed up from the things that hold us back.

So at this Retreat, we first started with my workshop on Breaking the Stronghold of Fear. We talked about our First Fear– our first memory of trauma or loss, and the  resulting broken trust. Broken Trust causes a knee jerk reaction in us and in our subsequent relationships.

Many of us are still frozen back in that painful experience of trauma, and all other fears we later experience are layered over that initial experience where trust was broken and Fear entered in.

These layers of fear over fear can occur overtime until we are bound up by compulsions and unhealthy ways of coping–all resulting from the first fear that’s swallowing us up.

And then there’s the convoluted convictions we develop, that affect our relationships. These are the skewed negative “beliefs” that we have become convinced of, due to the trauma, that now dictate how we approach relationships and handle the ups and downs of learning to love and appropriately trust key people in our lives.

But we don’t do too well in these horizontal realtionships if we are reacting out of our past and having a hard time trusting the most Trustworthy person of all to help us–and that’s God.

Don’t believe the lies that God is out to get you, is angry at you, or is ready to catch you…when you’re doing something the least bit wrong. No, that’s not the God I know. Understanding God’s motive, his heart, and His plan for you will change everything.

It will change your world. It’ll change you. And then you will go out and change the world… for good.

It’s a journey. It involves the uncomfortable work of looking at your past and acknowledging the truth of any past trauma.  But the terror of your greatest nightmare, your worst fear, can not compare to the magnitude of God’s great, healing Love for you. So get ready.

It’s time to Break the Stronghold of Fear.