Come and learn to BE BRAVE

"Arise! For this matter is your responsibility, 

but we will be with you; be courageous and act."

Ezra 10:4

I am preparing to attend a women's conference at my home church, RiverStone Church in Kennesaw, Georgia. The theme of the conference is "Finding your treasure" and it will be a time of discovery with the Lord. We will be going on a treasure hunt. 

Oh, how I love to find lost treasures! 

Did you know that you have God- Gifted treasures buried deep with in your heart. Special treasures that make you  a "one of a kind". Treasures so special that you are considered a pearl of great price to your Heavenly Father.. 

Most of us know this.. but we don't feel this way in our hearts. 

Why?

Because everyday life .. hardships.. relationships.. mindsets and perspectives cloud and distort our treasure chests.. our hearts. We desperately need to slow down and uncover the treasures. We need them to be the person God's called us to be.. Our community needs for us to uncover them so they can see Jesus and experience Him in a way only "you" were designed to reveal. 

To do this we need community that will help us see the treasures. We need community that will help us be brave enough to begin the search.  It takes courage to uncover your treasures...It sounds boastful to say.. I am worthy and His beloved.. I have been called to set the captives free. We would rather say.. I'm just a vessel with no worth.. If the circumstances are the way they are.. Then it is His will to be done..This portrays a  powerless God. This is not the kind of mindset we should have.. We are special to Him .. created by Him to display His glory here on earth. When we see the special treasures He has deposited with in us.. we begin to understand why we are here.. and what we are here to do. We can join with Him and set the captives free and bring what is already done in Heaven to earth. 

So,

If your tired of feeling less than a pearl of great price.. come and join us this Saturday. Come and find your treasures.. your heart has been waiting way too long to be discovered.. so has your world:) 

As we prepare for our journey I thought it would be good to prepare our hearts with two songs. Donna Desilva used these songs in her teachings this week and I thought it would be good for us as well.

The first song sets our hearts to "be well" with where we are at on our journeys. What ever our past is.. we are still a pearl of great price in our Heavenly Father's eyes. The second song stirs us to be brave .. and that is just what our Heavenly Father wants us to be.. Brave.. Because it is He who makes us Brave:)

"It is well"

"You make me brave"

Come, and Learn to BE BRAVE! 

Getting to know myself - A gift from depression

I love the message of this song is - God knows us.. 

"Nothing is hidden from Your sight

Wherever I go, You find me

You know every detail of my life

You are God and You don't miss a thing"

God, He doesn't miss a thing. That statement would of scared me 10 years ago. Why? Because I only saw a God who didn't love. I saw a God who was only concerned with my performance and not my heart. Today, I see God so differently.. He knows me and loves me and cares deeply for the condition of my heart. This  new perspective was a gift from my journey through depression.  

I wanted to share with you what it looked like for me to journey through..

So many times we only get to see the finished product.. that helps no one. I feel like God has called me to be a witness. Someone who will share what it looks like to walk with Jesus through the messy parts of life.I want to be someone who not only shares the happy parts.. but one who shares the heartbreaking parts too. 

Because, the moment your heartbreaks is when Jesus is the closest to you. 

You need to know that..

 Jesus does His best work when we see what He See's.. He knows when our heart is broken.. and most of the time we don't ...or we ignore it.. or we cant bare to look at it. When we ignore our heartbreaks we get lost. We lose small parts of our hearts with every heartbreak that is not taken to Jesus. Ignoring them will eventually result in a hardened heart that feels nothing..not even love. "Do it Your Self" preservation is a coping mechanism straight from Hell.. the enemy wants you to think you can ignore and handle it yourself.. that is a lie. Don't be fooled by it.. Jesus cares and wants you to have a whole heart that loves the way His heart loves. 

So my first assignment in the journey through depression was "Getting to know myself".

As I journaled each day, I discovered clues about myself and what God wanted me to know about myself. He focused my attention on my desire.. and it was to feel joy again. 

He showed me how desire was an emotion and emotions were from Him. 

A definition of desire-  an emotion from God that moves you to act, to attain or posses an object of pleasure. 

After understanding that emotions were from God and that they were suppose to move me to attain good things.. objects of pleasure .. I quickly noticed that something was not lining up with this truth. My emotions were not moving me towards pleasure.. they were moving me to places of pain. 

And this is just what God wanted me to see

He saw that my emotions were taking me to places of death not life.. dead ends not new beginnings and only seeing sorrow and never seeing joy. He explained to me that my sight at this point was OK.. but I needed to talk to Him about what I was seeing. I needed Him to help me shift my perspective. He was showing me how to know myself.. and the process looked like this.. 

When I felt hate... or bitterness.. or sadness with out hope.. He would have me pray..

I would pray for hope..to receive grace..that would do the work of faith..

The work of faith for me in the midst of this process was found in the definition of Faith.."the assurance of things hoped for ..the conviction of things not seen". I dug in a little deeper and asked the question.. what is conviction? The answer was the "awakening of conscience preceding conversion". Then I asked.. what is consciousness?  The answer.. "knowledge of our own actions or thoughts". 

So, as I looked back at what I wrote.. I felt like that Lord showed me something that has now changed  my life for ever ..for the good.

He was showing me how to bring to Him the emotions that I was truly feeling..and when I did that His grace would do "a work" on my emotions. He helped me see the true condition of my heart and began to show me how His grace would change my emotions into righteous emotions. He helped me see that what I was feeling and seeing needed His perspective ..My emotions without Jesus only saw the bad in each circumstance.. But with Him I would learn to see the good too. He was teaching me how to balance myself in the midst of heavy unbalanced depression. The best part about this phase of my journey was.. He was OK with where I was at.. He loved me and wanted me to know the way back to a life filled with Joy. There was no condemnation just love and acceptance. He was showing me that I had come to the end of knowing how to help myself..He wanted me to learn how to lean on Him for help. He was showing me that He knew me..and He knew what was best for me:)

Our greatest desire is to be known.. Timothy Keller says it best.. 

“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”

He knows us.. and He still loves us:) Awaken into the knowledge and understand of that..

When you have these two key components built into your foundation of faith you He can begin to transform your emotions into ones that take you to pleasure... to joy.. to hope. 

This is what the process looks like to me..

1. I have learned to take note of my emotions

2. I take them to the Lord

3. He helps me line them up against righteous emotions

4. These look like the fruit of the spirit because these emotions are motivate by love

5. When they don't line up.. I wait before I act

6. I let them rest and allow Jesus to clean them of all impurities

7. I also take my unclean emotions to wise counsel.. they help me work through until I am        motivated by love and not hate or bitterness..

8. When my heart feels like grace has done its work of faith.. I will feel a different side of the emotion.. I will feel the love side of it. 

9. This new emotion now motivates me towards places of life.. out of depression. 

This is how we grow in character through obeying our counsel in the midst of suffering. This is the process of taking back stolen ground and how God can use everything for good.

I hope this helps you see the first steps to take while journeying through depression. It helped me and I my hope is that it will help you:)

How I found my way "through" depression.

This song has a great message

"Go back, go back to the ancient paths

Lash your heart to the ancient mast

And hold on, boy, whatever you do

To the hope that's taken hold of you"

In light of all the talk about depression this past week, I thought I would speak about my own journey through a very real depression. I believe I made it through to the other side and wanted to share...

Hope

That was what the Lord told me to pray for. (and by the way.. Me and The Lord at this time were just getting to know one another other.. I was a beginner )

One simple word began my quest through depression. It began with a question, and isn't that what Jesus does best? He always locates our hearts with a question. My question was "What is the Joy of the Lord?" 

This was my journal entry on June 3, 2008. 

I'm going to let you take a peek at how my mind processed depression and grief. As I look back on this journal.. it looks like I was a bit crazy. And yes, I agree with what you are thinking as you look at the journal entry above.. It almost looks like notes from some nutty professor. I believe at this point of my journey I was a bit crazy...but,  I had never been in a place like this before. I was desperately trying to make it to the other side. I wanted to feel joy again, but I didn't know how that would ever be possible. I had been in counseling and been given medication..but none of it was working. At this point of the journey I had just switched to a new counselor and stopped taking medicine. My counselor suggested that I start keeping a journal. I was never one who journaled before .. but I thought at this point getting out what was stuck on the inside of me would be good..and this is how the Lord led me through. I know, it looks like a mess.. but this one question from me to the Lord actually led me down a path where I received a miraculous healing in my heart. I asked the question.. What is the joy of the Lord.. and I heard Him answer.."It is your strength, Julie." I then asked what is God's strength? I then heard.. "Faith" 

Is God's secret joy my faith? 

"Faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen."

- Hebrews 11:1

And it was here that God revealed the desire of my heart.. I was hoping for joy again.. and the secret path that was going to lead me to feel joy again was to have faith for it even if I couldn't see it. 

I made a vow at this point to lean on God.. my counselor and my community until I saw joy again. These are key components to the healing journey. 

1. The most important part of this journey is to learn how to lean on Jesus. His word is active and alive and can change the way you feel. I am a living testimony and witness to the healing power of having a personal relationship with Him. 

2. You can not do this alone.. you need wise counsel. I had been to many counselors at this point hadn't found much success. But, I didn't give up.. I kept looking and came across one who's whole goal was inner healing which produced outer transformation. She taught me how to talk to Jesus and how to discern His voice. I still see her today.. she is now more of a mentor to me. She has changed and saved my life:)

3. You also need community.. one that is walking down the same path as you. This helps you see that you are not alone. In this place of community you will find others who can share and help carry your pain. These people will become another family and life line for you. 

4. You also need to engage in life giving mind altering perspectives. In the midst of depression you need to learn how to change the way you see. You need to be able to see more than just the bad.. You need to be trained on how to see the good too. For me I came to an understanding that depression wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was place of "pressing down for me". It was a place where God was pressing out of me what didn't need to be there and also a place where God would fill me with new things.. things of Him that I would  need to feel joy again. This is where I came up with the name of my blog.."Hollow to Whole". The Lord showed me that Depression wasn't bad .. it was a place "in between".. I was in the middle of a journey going from a place I knew to a place I didn't know. I had no experience or concrete context of the new place I was going.. but I knew faith would get me there.. and today I can honestly say.. I have found joy again. I don't blame God for the bad things that have happened anymore.. I know now to grab His hand when the bad things come. He teaches me in these places. He uses what the enemy sends my way to kill me to actually give me life. I have so much more than knowledge.. I have an "understanding".. 

And.. the understanding is .. the joy of the Lord.. is actually my strength. His joy comes to us when we allow the grit of life to change us .. mold us.. transform us.. It builds character and a firm foundation that helps us stay strong when the next storm comes. We will do this process over and over again here on earth.. It helps to make us a clearer reflection of Him here on earth:) 

Just so you know... the journey is messy.. it's hard.. but I feel like this is how Jesus wanted me to see it.. Life is not about doing everything right the first time.. We learn by living.. walking into the messy parts of life and taking note of our stuff.. Its never really about the other person or the circumstance.. It's all meant and sent to teach us.. it's always about making the person of you better, stronger from the inside out. 

This is my take away from my journey through depression..