My Story in My Own Words

This past Sunday I had the opportunity to share in church my journey with God.  I would like to share that with you.  Below I have the link to the website to listen to it.  I will also put the text below if you prefer to read it.  If the group mentioned at the end is something that you are interested in, please, please contact me.  Either call me or message me and I will get you the rest of details.  You do not have an FBCer to be part of this group!  I pray that you are blessed.

click Here for link to FBC Sermon with my testimony. It is the April 22, 2012 sermon

Here is the text:

I have been a Christian for most of my life.  I think that I received Christ at a young age.  I lived a life where it appeared as if my husband & I had it all together.  I said all the right things, rarely missed a Sunday at church, and served in various ministries.  I appeared to have a strong faith.  The secret was that my strong faith wasn’t in God, it was in myself.  I believed in God, but I did not live for Him. I didn’t pursue a relationship with Him because I didn’t need Him, I had myself.  I had a stronger belief in my abilities, my plans, my works.  I did not trust God as a loving, compassionate, merciful God of grace.  His love was just another thing that I had to earn and as long as it appeared that I was doing everything right, then I would be all set.  What nobody knew was that on the inside I was a complete mess.  I had a desperate need for control so that I could hide not only from the world and my loved ones, but from myself and from God.  My life was dominated on the inside by anger, bitterness, pride and unforgiveness.  It was fueled by pain, hurt, fear, no trust, self-righteousness and a self-loathing.  My walls were sky high and a mile thick.  Nobody got more than my surface.  While part of me longed to be able to connect with others – friends, my kids, my husband, God, I wouldn’t risk being vulnerable.  I refused to let myself be in a position where it happened again.

     In the first year of our marriage, my life was shattered by a pain that I never thought I would experience; my husband’s betrayal.  Together our life went on and it was never allowed to be discussed again.  I didn’t turn to God for healing.  I turned on the self-protection to the extreme levels, which manifested in control.  I spent the next 9 years hating my husband, hating myself and hating God.  I didn’t obey God’s commands in relation to Him or to my husband - to respect him, love him, submit to him, serve him or care for him. God let this happen and so I wouldn’t trust Him.  I lived in a pain that suffocated every aspect of my life.  Out of pride I dug in my heels and determined that no man was going to leave me for someone else and as a result I became completely dependent on someone I hated - to define who I was.  I chose to live in bitterness & unforgiveness.  I believed in God but I allowed my life to be opened wide for the evil one to have free reign of my thoughts, beliefs, actions & behaviors.  In Christ, I had the ability to choose a life of joy and peace no matter what I went through. God had given me an opportunity to turn my life over to Him.  He revealed to me that I desperately needed Him.  I didn’t listen.  I hardened my heart because I felt justified because of what happened to me.  So instead I chose to live in a life of sin and I would have remained there forever but God decided to have mercy on me. 

     In 2010, God revealed His amazing mercy & love for me by bringing to light many months of a new betrayal by my husband.  My perfectly controlled life shattered into a million little pieces.  I spent the first few months in the same patterns of desperately trying to keep control of something, anything.  It didn’t work.  I was alone with 3 little kids.  I had a choice to make, was I going to pull in, grab control and self-protect more, or was I going to give up all control and run to Jesus?  By His grace, I ran to Jesus.  And what’s the result?  This has been the most painful, fearful and yet amazing 2 years of my life as God has been transforming my life into something beautiful.  I turned my life over to Him who is able and He has been ripping away idols and layers upon layers of sin & unrighteousness.  In my complete and utter brokenness I’m seeing His grace.  My walls have been flattened and I have finally begun to be freed from my bondages of sin.  I no longer carry the anger, fear & hurt like I did.  I still feel & experience those emotions, but God is teaching me to run to Him and claim His promises as a child of God, so that the emotions no longer rule my life.  I am learning to battle the lies with the truths.  I’m learning that I can’t earn His blessings, and my outside goodness is worthless to save me.  And I’m learning the sweet truth that I have no control over anything.  I’ve learned that going through the motions of coming to church is not following Jesus. How I live my life in my heart and outside these church doors reflects the truth on whether or not I really choose to follow Jesus.  I know now that trials are an evidence of God’s mercy; that they don’t come just to hurt me.  They come so that I can recognize God bringing me to the end of my sinful self so that I would surrender my life to Him.  I’m living the truth that through whatever happens God will never let go; He is enough and He can be trusted. Isaiah 43:1-3 “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flames shall not consume you.  For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.”  I’m learning that by His grace, I’m still a broken mess and for this – I have Jesus!

     One blessing that has been getting me through is the love from my sisters in Christ.  The support & prayers from my church family is beyond words that I can say.  Friends that I never let in before this, have never left me.  They literally picked up my broken, weak, sobbing body from the floor and carried me.  I thank God for them every day, they are truly God’s blessings to me.  And that has led to an amazing evidence of God using what satan intended for evil for His glory.  We will be starting a new group here at FBC.  This is a confidential group that will meet twice a month Saturday mornings starting May 5.  It is a group for women who have been betrayed by their husbands. The pain of betrayal is a very deep, unique pain that attacks a woman from so many different angles. You have a choice in how you can face the storm.  I tried it both ways, on my own and then with God. We will learn together to run to Jesus for the healing that only He can bring.  God is not asking you to let time try to heal you, and he is definitely is not asking you to try and heal yourself.  He is asking you to let Him heal you.  Psalm 147:3 “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” God is asking you in Matthew 11:28-30 to “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Join me in taking our heavy burdens & broken hearts to the One who came to heal them.  Don’t settle for living life as a victim of someone else’s sin.  It is something that happened to me, to you and it will always be a part of your story.  But choose today to not let it define you.  Claim your victory in Christ as His child and let Him lift you from the ruins for His glory. If you are interested in this group, please call me here at church or at my home for the rest of the details.  

     In closing, I need to make it known that because of God’s work in me, I have an unconditional love for my husband that I never thought would be possible.  I stand with God for His complete healing & restoration of my marriage and family.  This has not been a story of how my husband has hurt me, in fact, I am thankful that God has used him to reach my hurting soul.  My husband never was, and never will be my problem.  My heart and my sin are the problem. I alone will stand before God and answer to Him for my choices and I will have nobody else to blame.   And the only solution is a faith & belief in Jesus to a point where there is nothing better than complete surrender.  This is a testimony of God’s power to heal despite the fact that the worldly circumstances have not changed. God did the impossible in my life and by faith I believe, it is only the beginning. 

Love You Always and Forever

This week I was able to have a great conversation with my son about love.  This is another blessing of God's mercy in our circumstances because if we were not where we are at, I don't know if I ever would have had this conversation with him because I hadn't even learned it yet.  So I thank God for this opportunity to share with Tyler what God has taught me about love.

Love you Always and Forever.  That is how my husband and I have always signed our letters & cards to each other.  I actually pulled out a bunch of them the other night just to reread them and I was struck by the love my husband verbalized to me throughout the years.  I showed them to Tyler to let him read them for himself.  It made me smile to remember that we always sign them that way.  That our love was not only meant for always, but forever.  Our love for each was, is, real so what happened?  Our love was a worldly form of a feeling.  And that my friends, is not what love is.

Love is not a feeling.  Love is a choice. 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 "Love is patient & kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believe all things, hopes all things, endures all things."  I can not look at that definition of love and miss how obvious it is that I need to chose those things.  I need to choose to give up my own way, I need to choose to be patient & kind, I need to choose to rejoice in the truth!  You don't lose love or "not love someone anymore", you chose to stop walking in love.  Love doesn't run out when things are hard or give up.  Love is a choice to endure all things. 

As a culture, we are so caught up love being this beautiful, tingly, feeling that makes me feel good.  I either feel it or I don't.  How deceived we have all become!  Love is not suppose to be about how I feel or what I want or what someone else can do for me.  Love is about ME choosing to SERVE another for THEIR good.  In our sinful & selfish desires of our flesh we forget that the greatest example of love was God giving His own Son up to die on a cross for us! 1 John 4:10 "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins" If that isn't proof that love is about giving & serving rather than receiving, I don't know what is. 

I also explained to Tyler that there was a huge problem with the way that my husband & I loved each other.  And that is, we loved each other first.  We are called by God to love Him above anyone or anything else. Matthew 22:37-38 " you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment"  If you miss that first step, everything under it is built on the wrong foundation.  I did not love God more than husband.  And if I'm being completely honest, I kinda loved myself more than my husband too.  So Me, Husband, God, kids, etc.  And God was watching me live that everyday!  By shaking up my world, he has finally fixed the order so that I am living the way God designed it.  God, Husband, kids, etc.  Jon was never suppose to be first.  I was never suppose to be Jon's first.  We had it all wrong!  God is always suppose to be first for all of us.  And when we love God first, and are living our lives for Him, everything else falls into place because GOD IS LOVE.  When you choose God, you can choose to unselfishly serve, and love will follow. 1 John 4:7-8 "Beloved, let us love one another, for is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone what does not love does not know God, because God is love".

Are you missing love?  Searching for love?  Think you've found love?  Think you've fallen out of love?  I beg you to look at the foundation you are basing that on.  Are you setting yourself up for failure before you even start?  When God is the love of your life, when you love God more than there are stars in the sky, then you will truly know love.  I will always sign my letters to my husband with "love you always & forever" and because of God's mercy & grace, those words have never been more true and more meaningful. And now, my children have a tangible and real example of what true love in a relationship looks like.  God is good.

Forgiveness

Forgive: to cease to blame or hold resentment against; to grant a pardon for

Forgiveness is a huge topic that can be tackled from so many different angles, so where do I even begin with what I've been processing!  Have you ever felt hate towards someone else?  Have you ever told someone how much you've hated them?  Those are stinging words to throw.  But what drives one to hate another?  When you stop & really think about it... Hate is driven by an unwillingness to forgive.  When I have a hate problem, I have a heart problem "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks" Luke 6:45 (emphasis added)

When am I unwilling to forgive?  When I am angry, when I've been hurt, when I feel that I deserve some justice, when that something encroaches on what I want for myself, etc.  Did you notice the theme... WHEN I.  "But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes" 1 John 2:11.  When I won't deal with hate & anger, I am choosing to walk in darkness which gives Satan the way in to blind my eyes from God's truths. "Be angry & do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the devil" Ephesians 4:26-27.  The feelings of being hurt & angry are not necessarily a sin but when they prevent me from forgiving - that is a sin.

I lived a life of hating my husband for most of my life.  Early in our marriage, I was very deeply wounded by him.  We never dealt with it.  We pretended it never happened.  Our trust & peace were shattered because neither one of us were ever willing to forgive!  The sun went down on my anger day after day after day and I gave my life as an open book to the devil.  And I treated my beloved like the pain I carried every day, it was his fault and I hated him for it.  Did that work for me?  Nope.  All it did is foster in him a hatred of me.  It was a merry go round of hurt, anger, pain & betrayal.  I chose to not be obedient to God and forgive my husband.  And that was wrong and a sin not only against my husband, but most importantly offensive to God.  God has called us to forgive!  "and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors" Matthew 6:12;  "bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive" Colossians 3:13 .  Just to name a few.  In His mercy, God has revealed these areas of my life and I have since found freedom from them under His grace!  God has forgiven me and no longer sees those sins.  I give all glory to God that I no longer hate my husband.  In fact, I have never loved him more.  Letting go of that anger, hurt & unforgiveness opened a door of unconditional love that I honestly thought I would never have for him.  When I put myself aside and became willing to put him before me, Satan's foothold was gone from my life.  However, daily forgiveness is a necessary thing for me.

My life contains people that are my enemies.  They are not out for my good, in fact they are out to hurt me.  How do I keep forgiving those who sin against me in a very real way, every day?  In my flesh - it is impossible.  Every day I pray multiple times a day that God would give me a heart of compassion for those lost souls, that His Spirit would generate forgiveness within me.  Facing that every day is a strength that can only come from Him.  Why do it?  Because God tells me to "But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you." Luke 6:27-28.  So every day I pray for those people that one day, they may choose to put aside the hurt & anger and honestly forgive.  And that before it is too late they may have their eyes opened to their sin, that they would step out of Satan's hold on them in the darkness, and accept His forgiveness.  Trust me, it's not easy.  And sometimes I fail.  That's why I need Jesus!  But by His Spirit, He will do it in me.

So what should you do?  Forgive.  And like I said, there are a ton more verses and ways this topic can continue.  I'm already thinking of more, but I can't cover them all.  My suggestion: dig into God's word because there you will find the leading.