About a month after my mom’s death, my family took a trip to Eureka Springs to get away and recuperate.
I got on Airbnb and went searching for a spot of interest and so I’m looking and I’m looking and I’m not very impulsive and I try to really think things through. And so, I’m looking and looking and looking and looking….and looking and looking, Haha. Finally, I get frustrated and then I realize that I haven’t asked God to guide me, so I asked him to guide and lead me to the right place. God has to nudge me when my self-sufficiency is coming out. After my prayer I went back to searching and boom, there’s a beautiful cabin in Eureka springs, Arkansas, a beautiful place in the Ozarks that immediately resonated with me.
I start researching and surveying the area and all the things to do and then I see the Holy Land and Passion Play program. I’ve heard of the Holy Land and the Great Passion Play in Eureka but have never been.
My family and I all agreed this would be the right place to go and so as a unified family, I booked the cabin. I knew this was where God wanted us to go. I had peace and clarity as confirmation.
When it was time to head that way we set off and enjoyed the road trip and family time and had a wonderful time in Eureka springs. It was a much needed getaway!
The day after we arrived, we went to a thrift store (I LOVE thrift stores and most of my clothes are thrifted!) The people there told us about the Holy Land and asked if we have seen it yet and we said no but were planning to go. They told us to make sure we saw the cross display because it has this unique echo effect when you’re standing on this circle praying or talking. They told us where it was and so after we left the thrift store we drove over there.
When we arrived at the Holy land, I had this overwhelming feeling that we were not supposed to be there just yet. I expressed this to my husband and so we then agreed to go back to the cabin and come back later.
When we got back to the cabin, I had this huge wave of grief come over me. I started to feel depressed and started to think about my mom and how I wished I could have told her about our trip and asked her if she had ever seen the Passion Play. I started feeling hopeless and some of my childhood triggers started to surface.
Satan loves to capitalize on our most vulnerable emotions and if we let him he can really cloud our thinking and obscure our view of God and his presence hanging thick dark clouds over us.
Overwhelmed, I climbed into the bed and all motivation had left me. I didn’t want to do anything. I was going into dorsal vagal shutdown which is when your nervous system starts completely shutting down from all the overwhelm. I was having somatic symptoms including my fibromyalgia giving me grief.
Later that evening my family encouraged me to get up and go back to Holy Land.
At first, I was hesitant. I was not feeling good at all. But I reminded myself that I’m in a state of nervous system overwhelm and I know when a person enters this state that they’re not going to see things clearly.
I started to take my thoughts captive and renew my mind to the knowledge of God and his character of love and started to seek his presence and prayed the Aaronic Blessing which my mom would always pray over me. “24 “The Lord bless you and keep you;
25 The Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
26 The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.” Numbers 6:24-26
I have this little stone plaque that my sister gifted me with the Aaronic Blessing that I have it sitting on my kitchen counter next to a stone plaque of the serenity prayer and a mug my husband bought me that says “I love you more” on it. My mom used to always tell me she loved me more when I would tell her I loved her and my husband knowing this got me this mug without telling me and gifted it to me after my mom died. I absolutely loved it and teared up when he gave it to me!!
After I spent a few minutes talking to God and doing somatic exercises to get out of my overwhelm, I started to feel better, and we decided to go ahead and go to the Holy Land.
When we got there, I started to think about my mom and started to grieve again, and I just wanted to ask her if she’s ever been there. It’s really hard when you want to ask a question or tell something to a loved one that has passed on but you can’t!
After restoring my spirit through sanctuary in God, I started to feel better and so my family and I set out to make our way to the Holy Land.
While walking around the Holy Land, I came face to face with the Christ of the Ozarks statue. I started to weep, and grief washed over me again. I took time to lament with God asking him to once more restore my soul and strengthen me.
After I lamented, I remembered the goal in life is not to remove pain and trials or discomfort. But to get to the place where we work with it, alchemizing it instead of pushing it away. In this life sacred tension is necessary for our spiritual growth and maturity. Going through pain and trials and emotional overwhelm while united to God in the midst of pain places us holy ground and this allows God to transform our pain and trials into refined gold, bringing us even nearer to the heart of God, encountering his love through personal and experiential revelation.
I felt so close to God at that moment. I felt completely enveloped by him. He was holding me. Embraced by his love I felt encouraged and strengthened to face my pain head on with him by my side instead of trying to avoid or run from the pain. If we’re constantly trying to control externals, then we will never have true peace, but surrendering to the God of love brings freedom. 27 “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27
This peace Jesus is talking about is peace even in the midst of trials and pain vs the world’s peace which is peace only when there’s external calm. With the world’s peace you are bound to being tossed to and fro emotionally without any stability unless there’s external calm. With the peace God gives we can have inner peace even in the midst of raging storms.
During my mom’s funeral it wasn’t supposed to rain or storm during the time of her funeral, but it started to rain hard, and it was thundering and lighting with lightning bolts in the distance not far from where we were. I was worried the pallbearers were going to drop her casket at one point because the rain was coming down so hard that it got muddy and slick very fast. Now my mom would have thought it was hilarious if they dropped her casket. I think I would have been horrified.
Even with the raging winds, lightning strikes and thunder rolling, I felt calm. I had peace. I knew God was with us in the midst of the storm, especially the storm of us about to bury my mother in the ground.
God put on my heart that my mom was a seed and that her death would bring forth fruit in my life. The blouse I picked out for her was a pink silky spring like blouse with flowers and the dress I wore was a pink spring maxi dress. I didn’t want to wear black. This isn’t goodbye but until I see you again. This was pain and heartache mixed with celebration that she would never be harassed or oppressed by Satan again. Her work was finished. She rests in Christ her Lord and Savior. Though our separation is deeply painful I know I will see her again and that God will fill the void and sustain me until we’re reunited.
God’s peace is peace even in the midst of life’s storms. How fitting for her funeral to have exemplified that. I know some people may have been on edge with the weather (it was crazy and intense!) but I knew God was with us.
In this Life, the reality is there is good and bad until the old order of things is done away with when all pain and suffering is over, when God’s and humanity’s last enemy which is death, is destroyed forever. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” Revelation 21:4
Growing up I would constantly get overwhelmed and go into dorsal vagal shutdown because I was not modeled or taught how to handle my emotions and on top of that my childhood was very chaotic which just compounded the issue.
I would panic and try to suppress my emotional overwhelm but God has since taught me how to sit with my feelings and emotions and let it wash over me and truly feel them instead of suppressing them. This teaches the brain that emotions are not a threat though they may feel like it. It teaches the brain that the overwhelm doesn’t last. Emotions, rise, peak, then fall and go away if you attune to them.
Spiritual health requires that emotions be attuned to with compassion and until you attune to them, they will loop and get louder and will eventually get your attention one way or another whether that’s your health breaking down or self-destructive coping mechanisms becoming too destructive where you can no longer run away from them. Too the stronger our vagal tone, the higher our window of tolerance.
When I’m not taking care of myself as much as I need to and life is very stressful and my vagal tone is low, I will slip into dorsal vagal easier, and my triggers will be harder to manage. Health and holistic health because we are spiritual beings and vagal tone are KEY to managing life’s overwhelm!! Holistic health and vagal tone are powerful and necessary spiritual weapons and are key to healing and sanctification.
Attuning to your emotional world is becoming emotionally available to yourself instead of avoidant and this is a huge part of healing any type of trauma or emotional pain. You will never heal, avoiding what needs to be attuned to.
Ignoring our emotional and spiritual world creates cracks in our armor making us more vulnerable to the enemy. Satan loves that humans are emotionally avoidant and lack spiritual and emotional intelligence because then he can use this vulnerability and appeal to our flesh making it easier for us to submit to the flesh for salvation instead of abiding in Christ which brings forth fruit of the spirit from being well nourished, satiated and whole in Christ. When we feed our flesh, we starve our spirit, and this just brings more soul starvation which makes our flesh even hungrier to where we’re never satiated and so we become more miserable. It’s a cycle that perpetuates and concretes itself.
So, while facing the Christ of the Ozark statue I felt my emotions attuning and connecting to them and did a full body scan, feeling sensations, pain and tightness from the top of my head and down to my feet completely feeling the emotions wash over me. If you attune to yourself emotionally, the emotions will cease from being so threatening and will go away and integrate into your subconscious as a finished story instead of looping. This gives you a sense of lightness and of liberation. I will explain more about the full process in a future post. As a disclaimer I am not giving medical advice, or diagnoses, this is simply how I deal with my emotions and trauma and no, I am not worshiping a statue nor am I promoting worshipping a statue if that’s where your mind went. I shouldn’t have to say these things, just as God shouldn’t have to tell people not to eat tide pods but here we are.
After I finished this process, I see my family standing over at distance and they tell me they found the cross the women at the thrift store were talking about.
I walked to them and as a family we made our way to the cross. There’s this circle in front of the cross that instructs you to stand on it when you’re praying or talking. When you begin to speak you hear your voice, but it has an energetic resonance to it that makes your voice echo. The caveat is that only you can hear your voice echo. It was incredible to experience.
After I tried it, I immediately moved off of the circle and looked at my family. I was like, “Oh my gosh, try this!” and so they did. They were just as astonished as I was, and we were so impacted that we literally had to just sit down and stare at each other in silence.
Shortly after, a car pulled up, and I felt it would be best if we left so that the people could have some time to themselves like we did. As we were walking away, we passed by the car and the people got out and asked us if we had ever been there before and we answered no and they said if we had some time, they could tell us about some history on it. We were overjoyed by that, so we made our way back to the cross with them.
It turned out that they were a married couple that volunteered there. They started telling us the story of the cross display and how there was a man that God impressed to draw this blueprint vision of the cross and when he was done with the blueprint, he felt impressed by God to take it to the Holy Land In Eureka Springs and tell them about his vision and how God had impressed him that this cross was supposed to be there on the Holy Land as one of their displays.
If you go to the Passion Play website, you can read about it.
As they are telling us this story of the cross I started to cry and I got my phone out and pulled up my website and I showed them how God did the same thing to me, how one day years ago I started drawing a cross which was the inspiration for my picture that I made below and that God put on my heart that I was to put this cross picture in my book Sozo: Salvation the refining flame of love and truth. I am huge on the cross and cruciform theology.
The cross has so many layers and so much depth and at its essence points to the heart of God, as he is the epitome of love and selflessness and sacrificial love is his very nature, and he created all of creation to reveal his glory of love. If you study Quantum Physics which is science/reality at its smallest scale and at its deepest layer, it reveals the very essence and nature of who God is and how he created all of creation to operate revealing the glory of his character of love.
The cross is a symbol of selfless sacrificial love which is God’s very essence and how he created all of creation to function. The cross also became another tree of life which is what the Hanukkah menorah symbolizes, which points to Jesus who is the light of the world. The cross was the all-encompassing illumination of God’s radiance of love and truth piercing through the darkness of Satan’s lies that God cannot be trusted and that he’s unsafe with power.
The cross has 4 sides with a middle axis which unifies all of creation. The number 4 in the bible symbolizes creation and stability, order, balance and unity. The middle axis on the cross symbolizes the creator and his love that holds all of creation together.
The human body is even in the image of the cross, and the body is a mini cosmos that mirrors the universe. Our organs serve each other and function as a whole and without this ecosystem of subservient love our body would cease to function at all. All of creation mirrors and reveals God’s character of subservient love which is why in Romans chapter one it says “18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” Romans 1:18-20
God will not sustain lie which is why creation is currently unraveling because God is no longer man’s true north and this is even seen on the physical plane of reality for the physical always reveals the spiritual.
The earth’s iron core is cooling, which is weakening the earth’s magnetic field, which is causing the north pole to shift south, and I believe this shift has a big part to play in earth’s natural disasters increasing. For God to sustain a lie would mean that he’s a liar and God alone is true and cannot be anything but love and true.
The 4th commandment being the Sabbath commandment is the heart of the ten commandments pointing to our creator and his essence of love and how he created all of creation to reveal his glory through his very nature of love. The very word Abba which means father is in the word Sabbath!
Though the sabbath commandment is the heart of the ten commandments, it’s important to know and understand that the first commandment is the most important commandment because without the first commandment, the Sabbath commandment will be kept in a legal sense instead of relational, like how the pharisees and religious people in Jesus’ day kept it. They had the right day but kept it in the wrong spirit which made them Sabbath breakers even though they thought they were keeping it.
Whatever isn’t of faith is sin and God’s will is that we live by faith that works by love not legality. Legal religion leads to cold formalism and dead works that cannot cleanse the heart of selfishness and if anything, it increases selfishness.
The religious people of Jesus’ day “kept” the letter of the law of God including the Sabbath yet through the religious leaders, church and state clasped hands to crucify the Lord of the Sabbath.
The religious people thought Jesus was breaking the Sabbath when he was healing on the sabbath when he was only fulfilling the law through love which is the spirit of the law. The letter divorced from the spirit is not true obedience. Since the religious people adhered to cold formalism, they interpreted Jesus’ actions as transgression and evil.
The father and the Lord of the Sabbath chose the cross as the instrument of reconciliation, to destroy our enmity towards them to bind our heart back to God the father and himself in a trust-based relationship, how it was before the fall of humanity.
The pagan view of the crucifixion claims that God was at enmity with us, but God has never been at enmity with us; humans are at enmity with God! As David Asscherick said, “the cross was not sinners in the hands of an angry God, but God in the hands of angry sinners!
God’s enmity is only ever directed at sin. He separates people from their sin instead of dehumanizing them. If a person never separates from their sin and they grieve the Holy Spirit, then they become one with their sin, loving the lie and hating truth since they’re so strongly emotionally attached to the lie when God has given ample evidence of his redeeming expulsive love and at that point there’s nothing more that God can do to redeem a person.
God will never quit wooing a person to him as long as there is even a tiny bit of receptivity in us. Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is the only unpardonable sin and its unpardonable because its willful refusal, so God does what love does, and that’s leaving the person free to choose. Love never forces the will.
Jesus also didn’t have to convince the father to forgive us at the cross, God the father was already and has always been one in mind and heart in agreement with Jesus! “that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.” 2 Cor 5:19
The cross is mirror revealing our own hearts if we have enemy love or if we resort to the instrument of spiritual crucifixion with our enemies just as Rome used God’s creation, a tree and used it not to save being doers of the law, but became judgers of the law, killing vs saving. In God’s economy only faith that works by love is true faith. “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but it is the doers of the law who will be declared righteous.” Romans 2:13
“I have told you these things so that you will not fall away. 2They will put you out of the synagogues. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. 3They will do these things because they have not known the Father or Me” John 16:2
This verse above reveals what happens when you have zeal for righteousness and truth but it’s not motivated by the spirit of love therefore people who keep the letter of the law in the spirit of pride and self-righteousness with selfish motive will end up persecuting others even to the point of spiritual or physical murder thinking they’re doing God a service because they have zeal without the knowledge of God’s heart who is love.
This is the danger of having the letter of the law divorced from the spirit of the law. Spiritual maturity being sacrificial selfless love is fulfilled when we have both the letter of the law in union with the spirit of the law which is love. This is spiritual perfection as the bible defines it vs sinless perfection which we will never reach a state of perfect sinless perfection until after translation and glorification.
Believing we can be completely sinless before translation is arrogance rooted in pride vs humility and this self-righteous spirit makes one extremely vulnerable because you end up separating yourself from God thinking you’re strong being ignorant of your weakness just as when Peter proclaimed to Jesus that he would never betray him, but he did.
After his fall this brought humility to Peter and he learned to never rely on his strength and self-sufficiency again, making him understand the necessity of humility and staying close to Jesus for spiritual strength.
Self-righteousness comes when we compare our sins with others and this is the danger of self-deception which is self-satisfaction vs in humility seeing your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The sermon on the mount says blessed are the poor in spirit. This is when you know your need of a savior! God can’t help us when we are self-sufficient and self-satisfied, deluded from our own spiritual condition and need of a savior.
Luke 18:9-14
9 “And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.”
Just as God used the instrument of the cross to save vs in power to power over creation, he starward his power in love to save showing he’s safe with power and doesn’t abuse his power doing violence to his own law of love, whereas carnal humans will use the name of Christ to harm others and power over them in superiority.
Enemy love reveals if we’re safe with power and we become safe with power when we have humility before God and so we feel strong in our weakness because we’re yoked to God’s strength which gives us a sense of power, love and sound mind which enables us to live by the law of love and power of love vs love of law and love of power which is authoritarianism living by the letter of the law divorced from the spirit of the law which is love.
Life can test us to see if we’re safe with power as Jesus is safe with his power. Do we use our power to build up or tear down? Do we power with or power over others in power struggles? The Genesis 3:16 power struggle curse becomes reversed when we allow the Holy Spirit to subdue our power and use our power in the spirit of humility and love.
When we feel we have a sense of agency through the abundance of salvation and security in Christ who gives us power, love and a sound mind this subdues the human tendency to give into fear and power over others.
A sound mind and inner tranquility through God’s love precedes self-control and inner dominion over the beast within which is why the bible tells us to let Christ’s peace rule in our hearts and to keep ourselves in the love and peace of God continually beholding our salvation in Christ. Meekness isn’t weakness, its power under control!! It’s true strength!! It’s a soul at rest in Christ’s love.
The letter of the law and the spirit of the law which is selfless sacrificial love united at the cross which is spiritual maturity and this power and manifestation of love was the very power to bind man’s hearts to their creator is a trust-based relationship reversing the curse of the fall. This is the type of enemy love God desires us to have. The wisdom of the cross is truly the power of God! “1 Corinthians 1:18-31 NIV
Christ Crucified Is God’s Power and Wisdom
18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”[a]
20 Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.
Getting back to the story, I showed these people at the cross my website with the picture I created of the cross and told them about my book. Right now, I’m in the final stages of editing my book. It’s taking way longer than expected but I keep developing it and my mom’s death and the Eureka Springs chapter and the cross is one of the newest chapters. God has a time for it to be done. If it isn’t done yet it’s not time for it to be done. I’m having to pay for editing out of pocket since I decided to self-publish, and editing is very expensive!
God truly is the God who sees, and he goes before us in everything. Every detail of our life is already laid out and prepared before the foundation of the world was even created, before we were ever born. God showed us why it wasn’t time just yet to go to the Holy land when we came earlier that day. God’s timing and ways are perfect!
God was already there before the foundation of the world. We all cried and hugged and talked and they shared some of their grief stories. They told me they would share my website with the man who had the vison of the cross-display Bobby Wilson and they told me about a grief specialist Bob Willis from Oklahoma and how he creates sculptures and has done sculpture presentations at the Passion Play and other places.
This whole experience was just so wonderful and soul nourishing, and I will never forget it! This was just another revealing of God’s love and sovereignty in my life that showed me greater depth of his love and goodness. Oh, what wondrous cross! What Wondrous love!
As we were talking, I felt like my whole life was flashing before me. I always wondered what would happen when I turned 37 because every ten years from, the time I was 7, something significant would happen. I was shuffled around from foster home to foster home the first 7 years of my life and when my mom got full custody of us when I turned 7, one night I couldn’t sleep and I remember seeing this picture of an angel protecting kids on a broken bridge and wondering how that can even be true because I felt like all I ever experience was the opposite of God’s loving watch care so I decided to put the supposedly loving God and angels to the test and so I went and got my mom’s lighter and caught a blanket on fire waiting to see if God and his angels would come and protect and save us.
Is this story embarrassing for me to tell? Absolutely. Did shame wash over me as I was typing this out? Most definitely, but I decided to be afraid and do it anyways because Satan would love nothing more than for me to run and hide so I can’t help other people. Perfect love cast out fear.
Will some people judge me? Probably, but I now understand that we don’t see the world as it is but as we are and when people are judging in a devil’s advocate way, it’s simply their identity being mirrored outwards and we don’t have to accept people’s projection arrows but we should see past the surface and understand what they need in that moment is the healing balm of unconditional love and compassion.
I can struggle with it too!! I too can project outwards, but God convicts me when I’m doing so and gently nudges me and reminds me what’s going on beneath the surface, and it then becomes an opportunity for him to reach into my heart and cleanse me in his cleansing love and for me to pray for the one I’m judging and remind myself we fight not against flesh and blood and Satan loves for wounded people to further wound themselves and others perpetuating the pain and dysfunction.
Once you understand how projection works it allows you to not take things as personally. When we judge, we’re just projecting our identity outwards, because the external mirrors the internal and the subconscious mind doesn’t have a concept of separation, so when you’re being judgmental, your brain thinks you’re thinking the judgmental thoughts about yourself which just reinforces the wounded identity.
Too, God honors our vulnerability. If people want to exploit our vulnerability God can allow circumstances to humble them. God knows how hard it is to be vulnerable and he sees it as an act of worship and trust, and do you not think he won’t vindicate you if someone takes advantage of your vulnerability? Do you think God wants the person judging to perpetuate their own brokenness? No, of course not! God wants us all to get to the place of humility because pride is separation from God, which is misery and destructive, so God wants us all to reach the place of humility before him and we can’t see God or reality clearly when we’re being hateful because again we see the world not as it is but as we are.
This is why we need spiritual eyes, the mind’s eye of faith that works by love, that sees past the physical into the spiritual so we can see clearly! May we all desire be born again of love, having an identity of pure love through God’s love that gives us new birth, as shown in 1 John 4. The reason why the legalists in John chapter 16 thinks they do God a service to kill is because they don’t know the father of love. If you read the whole chapter of 1 John 4 it expounds on this.
17″In this way, love has been perfected among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment; for in this world, we are just like Him. “18There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love. 19We love because He first loved us”
Thankfully during the fire, God spared our lives that night. I in no way condone what I did, and you should never tempt God like this!! I was a broken child questioning God’s existence. I didn’t understand why he allowed all the bad things that happened to me growing up. To make it worse I lit my sister’s blanket on fire while she was sleeping under it. Yikes.
In the picture of the two kids and the broken bridge I figured they were siblings so I figured this would really put God to the test and so I lit my sister’s blanket on fire while she was sleeping under it. I know I wouldn’t have done this if I truly believe God wouldn’t save us. Something in me just knew he would. There was a seed of hope and belief in me that just knew he would.
The blanket engulfed in flames- our room was engulfed in flames- yet me and my sister and the rest of my family were miraculously protected from the fire.
Fast forward 10 years when I was 17 I was told it would be very hard for me to conceive because of endocrine dysfunction. Soon after this doctor appointment I was attending a friend’s family reunion and a lady I didn’t even know came up to me and told me that God told her to tell me that God was going to heal me and that I would bring forth fruit of the womb and that God had plans to use me despite my troubled childhood and that I would be a bridge leading others to Christ. She knew nothing of my doctor appointment. She knew nothing of my health problems. When she told me I would be a bridge I instantly had a flash back of the fire and the angel with the kids and the broken bridge picture. And yes, I was later able to conceive healthy, beautiful children!!
Fast forward another 10 years when I was 27 I was sitting in an evangelism training class and that woman’s words come flashing across my mind. “You are going to be a bridge and lead many people to Christ”
It all started to make sense to me.
God is good. He has never left me. He will never leave me.
He in my one constant. My stability. My firm foundation and out of my pain and God’s redeeming work in my life a book that I am writing called: SOZO Salvation: the refining flame of love and truth is being birthed.
“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.” Genesis 50:20
“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.” Jeremiah 29:11
God promises to redeem every ounce of pain we’ve ever experience and promises us he has a plan, hope and future and expected end for us. Our pain gifts and positions us to be able to reach others in way that wouldn’t not have been possible unless we went through our trials. In heaven all things will be made plain, and we will see all things clearly and why things had to happen then way they did and the redemption that came from it.
Fast forward to age 37. My mother died. My heart was ripped in two. My greatest Gethsemane moment as I was in complete soul anguish, as I proclaimed,” God not my will be done but your will be done”. I was able to bear this pain because Jesus went before me and had his own Gethsemane moment to save humanity and help me during this very moment!! I always wondered what would happen at age 37, and my mother died. This wasn’t what I had in mind to happen at age 37 but it’s what God chose and since God has shown me his wisdom and shepherding love and watch care on a very deep soul level in my life, I can surrender my will with his trusting he knows best and trust that he will reveal exactly why he allowed things to happen as they did in this life. 4 “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.” Isaiah 53:4-5
Satan the author of death was defeated by Jesus through his death on the cross as a surety that God will redeem all pain. No matter what you’re going through in life know this…resurrection is coming and the cross is our assurance of this for the cross is the full manifestation of God’s redeeming and resurrecting power of love and to that I say Amen.
In the next post I’m going to tie the meaning of Eureka into the theme on Hanukkah, the Tree of life, the Cross, the seven branch Menorah and the book of Revelation!! LET THEIR BE LIGHT!!
