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:)
No comments:
Post a Comment