Fight Back with Joy – Starting week #5

“Even the most humble offerings of praise are bold declarations of trusting God no matter what.”

As I thought about what to write this week, I had to flip back to my joy bomb list and enter the Fight Back with Joy study guide! I hope your eyes have been opened as much as mine and that new JOY, new LIFE has sprung up in areas that needed awakening!

I truly know because of experience, that the devil is constantly trying to pull me down, make me stumble, steal my joy, tell me lies, planting “seeds of untruth” into my heart. It is my responsibility to stop him in his tracks! Don’t ever “clock out”, stay on alert, keep that stop sign up, and make him turn around and go back where he came from!

As I glanced at the title for day 5, Becoming More Real, I rushed quickly through the next few pages. This has been a prayer in my life for many years, to be real…To be authentic…For God to use my weaknesses, trials, and failures to help others that may be going through the same types of struggles. To not worry about my image before “man”, but to seek God’s approval and glory above everything!

The desire to “be real” started stirring in my heart when I was 27, going through a divorce, and feeling completely alone. I had a lot of loving family and friends around me, but no one who had shared the experience and pain of divorce. I remember through the first years, telling myself, “after you get through this, Linda, make sure you keep your eyes open for others that you can help walk this same road.” It’s kind of funny because at that point in time, I hadn’t given my heart and life to Jesus, and I truly had no idea how God was going to grow that desire in my broken heart!

Years later, the words from 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 came to life for me, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” After inviting Him to become my Savior, God stepped in, saved my soul, and started healing me. Shortly after, He began to join my life with others who needed to be comforted in the same troubled areas I had experienced. What amazed me was, as I reached out to care and love on others wounded by divorce, I myself was healed a little more and comforted.

Walking through divorce taught me a lot about “being real”. When we put up a facade to others and don’t share any struggles or failures, we don’t have opportunities to share how amazing God is! And how abundant His Grace is! How overwhelming and faithful His love is!

If we have every piece of our house and life put into perfect order (which not one of us does), what need is there for a Savior? And, if we appear to others that we have no flaws, no wrinkles, no weaknesses, no scars, what hope does that give them to have victory over their own struggles?

I remember sitting in church at the age of 27, with my 3 year old and 7 year old daughter, looking around at the “perfect” families. I had made a mess of mine. I saw no wrinkles, I saw no weaknesses, I saw no tears in the lives around me, and I felt alone. I try to remember that today, as I strive to share my weaknesses, my tears, my faults and failures with those God brings into my life. Not because I’m down on myself, but because I’m UP on my amazing Lord and Savior! He has redeemed me! Without Him, I am just a broken, struggling human. With Him, I experience forgiveness of my sins, healing from my mistakes and hurts, grace to move forward with joy into this day, and hope of an eternal home with Him in Heaven one day! When we share our failures and how God has turned to good, what the enemy meant for evil (Genesis 50:20), it gives others that have experienced the same failures HOPE! I know everyone in the church sitting around me and my 2 daughters, did not have perfect lives, but they had that appearance to me. At that point in my life, I believe if anyone had shared any bit of “struggling in marriage” with me, it would have flooded my heart with hope that I was not alone and there was a chance of forgiveness and healing in my own life!

This chapter reminded me not to forget that experience. To make even greater efforts to live a real life! To not worry about what others think, to be authentic. To recognize when I’m being fake or “wearing a mask”. This world is not about me – it is about my Savior! May my struggles, my weaknesses, my wrinkles, my scars, be used for His glory! May others be drawn to Him through my life! Not because it looks perfect and “put together”, but because they see my weaknesses and flaws, and how He can scoop into a heart and life and fill it with His healing power and amazing grace!

Please share with me your thoughts from last weeks study! I’d love to hear them!

Let’s “take back what the locusts have eaten”!

By His Grace,

+Linda

P.S. I absolutely love the story Margaret shared from The Velveteen Rabbit! I plan to buy that book as a reminder to me that once I become real, I can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. ❤️