DO YOU UNDERSTAND GOD’S LOVE FOR YOU?

This week I had a deeper revelation of God’s love for me that absolutely wrecked me and brought me to tears! Of course when you become a follower of Christ, you are told about how much God loves you because He sacrificed His one and only Son for us, I mean who out here would sacrifice like that for you out of love? We might go a step further and call someone crazy for doing such a thing! But really anyone who has a loving, nurturing parent knows that without hesitation they would give their life for their child! Well we have the ultimate parent who did just that for each and everyone of us! So yes I grasped that notion that God loves us, but to be honest its been a concept that has been floating on the surface, mainly because I think I have issues with accepting true unconditional love, deep I know, but the Holy Spirit is revealing so much I didn’t know was there! I am reading the Bible and getting free therapy sessions from my counsellor! I am being refined, really made a new and it is a long process but I know it is so necessary to my walk. Sometimes we don’t even know how much we have hidden until we truly dig deep within ourselves! I can’t say I would ever truly fathom how deep God’s love runs for us but something hit me while studying the Book of Ephesians this week.

I think its fair to say I was left truly humbled and feeling unworthy, a feeling I don’t think I truly comprehended before! Please do not mistake me for being arrogant before God, never have and never will! I always humble myself, WE must ALL humble ourselves before God! But something clicked today about how God SEE’S me that took me to another level of humble. I realised that the disconnect came from how I view myself! I realised that I don’t see myself through God’s eyes, the vision I have is flawed, this is why the idea of God’s unconditional love for me wasn’t really penetrating the way it should! I really couldn’t comprehend it for myself. It’s funny because I will be the first to tell YOU God loves you with conviction, but I noticed that I was skimming past the notion when it came to myself! This revealed to me I have a heart issue, well I should say the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I had an issue with the posture of my heart. We have a God who is a searcher of hearts and minds, so if something is not right trust and believe He will show you. The great thing about all of this is that I would of been still unaware of this issue if I hadn’t of picked up my Bible! This is why I will always say PLEASE READ YOUR BIBLES! If you want to experience true change, growth and Knowledge, it will come from God’s word, the source! The revelation for me was “maybe I don’t love myself the way I should?” I know we have all heard that saying ” if we can’t love ourselves how can we love anyone else!?” or something to that same affect. There is a definite truth to that I believe, because if I was made in the image and likeness of God but somehow have a problem with myself, it made me think how that had to have a knock on effect with how I receive God’s love!?! When we truly receive or understand why God loves us and how much He loves us, we experience a change within, and our hearts are bursting with joy! It promotes a change in our spirits and now our eyes and hearts are focused on Jesus, and what we focus on is what we emulate! So it’s fair to say we start to become more consecrated and Holy!

Now I know that feelings of unworthiness is advised to keep you humble, even the Apostle Paul refers to himself as undeserving! EPHESIANS 3:8 “ALTHOUGH I AM LESS THAN THE LEAST OF ALL THE LORD’S PEOPLE, THIS GRACE WAS GIVEN TO ME: TO PREACH TO THE GENTILES THE BOUNDLESS RICHES OF CHRIST” But even in his unworthiness and his acknowledgment of it, he doesn’t let it cripple him from doing what God has tasked him to do, he seems to accept God’s love, God’s grace, and get straight to business sharing the Good News, seeing his position as a privilege to serve! The problem with me or with us as a body of believers is that we can sometimes let that unworthiness stop us from doing what we have been called to do! Sometimes we can have trust issues that run deep from dealing with the disappointment of people. We become so jaded by this world we live in, when someone does anything for us we become suspicious, asking “why?” instead of just accepting a good deed with gratitude and moving on! This world has sold us a lie on love. When you think about it, it’s not surprising being that satan rules down here, and he is ALWAYS going to give us a perverted version of God’s way. Down here people do things for others disguised as love, but wait with expectation for you to reciprocate, because if you don’t then they get to remind you off all the things they did for you, and the things you don’t do is how they measure love. Down here love is love, meaning we all get to do whatever we like and nobody can tell you otherwise because that is not deemed as loving! (let me not get too carried away there!) But God say’s to us ” I love you despite of yourself, I love you because I made you, I love you even though you do not get it right all the time” and most importantly we can not skim by this “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9.

So the part that took my breath away in the book of Ephesians, and mind you I have yet to properly finish it, even though it is a short book there is so much to edify the spirit, I am going through it with a fine toothed comb! Earlier I mentioned how God saw me, and how it was different to how I saw myself. Well it’s Paul revealing the mysteries of God’s plan through Christ that humbled me. Let me see if I can break it down for you.

YOU are IMPORTANT! Let me start of there. You might look at your life now, and not feel much optimism about where or what this life has to offer you, but let me help you understand the way it clicked for me. Before God created the world He had a plan for YOU! He loved you so much He chose you, because He knew you already! Take a moment and let that set in…. Now His plan for you was to be Holy (EPHESIANS 1:4), and the Hebrew word for Holy means to be set apart! But set apart from what? Well if this was his plan before the world was created the only thing I could see was that He set us apart from the Angels, as that seemed to be the story less talked about when we think of the fall of satan which we know happened before God created the earth! Now stay with me here because it was reading further that solidified that idea for me! Because of man’s fall from grace with Adam and Eve, we were spiritually dead because it has become our nature to live in disobedience to God, we live to follow the desires of our flesh, doing what “feels” right at the whim of our sinful nature! EPHESIANS 2:2 “YOU USED TO LIVE IN SIN, JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD, OBEYING THE DEVIL-THE COMMANDER OF THE POWERS OF THE UNSEEN WORLD. HE IS THE SPIRIT AT WORK IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE WHO REFUSE TO OBEY GOD.” Imagine living under the wrath of God because of our disobedience! And even though we lived this way God still planned a way for us to be reconciled to Him! That is love, a love I will never fully realise, because usually when people do me wrong consistently my response isn’t to find a way to reconcile. But God being so full of grace saved you through Christ! He purchased your freedom with the blood of his only Son, because He knew that was the only way you could draw close to Him, the only way your sin’s could be forgiven so you could have eternal life and gain a seat with Him in the heavenly place through Christ! Because of your belief in Christ, you are saved by the grace of God which is a gift, and this has nothing to do with all the good you have done, so that you can not boast! (EPHESIANS 2:8-9)

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

So as unworthy as we may be, God still wants to redeem us! So even now as believers in Christ, when we let that feeling of unworthiness start to cripple us, its this knowledge of God’s love for us that should have us back on task like Paul! EPHESIANS 3:10 “GOD’S PURPOSE IN ALL THIS WAS TO USE THE CHURCH TO DISPLAY HIS WISDOM IN IT’S RICH VARIETY TO ALL THE UNSEEN RULERS AND AUTHORITIES IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES.” Remember when I talked about being set apart from the angels? Well this was the verse that solidified it for me! Doesn’t that blow your mind, or is it just me? When you believed in Christ you became part of one body (the church) You received the helper, the Holy Spirit, who was sent to lead you, blessing you with all the gifts of the spirit which come from the heavenly places, this is the sign that you have been purchased through the blood of Christ and a sign you will receive your inheritance that was promised from God! You gain God’s wisdom and it is shown through all the good things you do which He planned from long ago! And all this wisdom you show is just to display the multi faceted God you serve! And like a body we all have different functions, and your function may not look like your neighbours, your function may even seem minute, but its not because nothing about God is minute and nothing about God is unimportant! And all of this is to show these unseen rulers and authorities in heaven the richness that is God because they would never know this about their creator without YOU! I swear I had never looked at it like this before! This is the fun part of being a new believer, it’s learning all these things that let me know the character of my Father, it’s the deeper understanding of all that Jesus Christ has done for me!

I am gonna end with Paul and his prayer for the people of Ephesus, a prayer for spiritual growth for us all! I pray that you who reads this, God will empower you with inner strength, I pray that Christ will truly make a home in your heart, so that your faith will keep you grounded in his peace so that you will experience his love for you “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:18

LIVING SINGLE AND EMBRACING CELIBACY!

I promise to not make this post super uncomfortable but this is the post where we talk about SEX! *cue dramatic music* ok who am I kidding, this is probably gonna get a little uncomfortable, well for me at least since I am the one who will be baring my soul to you! I believe it’s so important to be transparent and honest, too many people (Christians) have these secret lives, living in shame and denial! Well I say there is no shame in admitting your struggles, the things you do in secret, no more hiding! because ultimately what we are really hiding from is ourselves, because we definitely cannot hide from God! When we hide, it stops us from repenting, and coming to God in repentance is so important in our walks! We all have a past, and some of our pasts are more colourful than others, but its those experiences that shape us, it’s those trauma’s for some that God uses to help us share with others how good our Father is, because even in our transgressions, God is so full of grace and mercy that his hand is always out stretched to us!

I think at the age of 39 it’s no surprise to know I am no virgin. I’ve only technically had one long term (7 year) relationship, after that its been plenty of near misses, you know when you think you meet someone great but after a few months (if that) they show their true colours? But in between all that it’s been a lot of casual hook ups. I went through a sexual liberation phase, I was celebrating being free and sexually uninhibited, and I was actively looking for these kind of connections all under the guise of female empowerment! Let me tell you as a Christian woman if you subscribe to that movement of feminism I warn you to be careful because its a slippery slope that can lead you away from a Christ led life! The joke of it was sexually I wasn’t fully fulfilled like you would expect living that life style, and its not got anything to do with the men I encountered, but more to do with the way God created me! I’ve always been a person that enjoyed building mental and emotional connections more than the physical, without that initial connection, sex wasn’t that earth shattering for me no matter the skill of my partner. So after kissing a lot of frogs, and experiencing some sexual trauma because of lack of wisdom on my part (some frogs need to be avoided at all costs!) by the summer of 2019 (before I found Christ) I had decided that I was not going to give my body away casually anymore, I would save myself for a real relationship! As you can imagine, once I put those conditions on my sex life, my sex life became non existent because surprise surprise nobody I met was ever looking for a long term commitment. By the time November came along, when I gave my life to Christ I had a taste of celibacy so I figured it would be easy to switch to being celibate until I met my husband.

It’s funny how as soon as I put those restrictions on myself, every temptation got thrown in my path! For 6 straight months, it seemed like every guy I had encountered had dusted off their black book and decided to check in on me! Some of them wanting to hook up again for old time sake or even asking about exploring more than just the casual setting, even my long term ex had tried to rekindle something! It was a crazy time! But like I said as soon as I decided to be obedient to God, the enemy tried his hardest to tempt me by offering me a perverted version of what I ultimately wanted, a relationship. ROMANS 8:7-8 “THE MIND GOVERNED BY THE FLESH IS HOSTILE TO GOD; IT DOES NOT SUBMIT TO GOD’S LAW, NOR CAN IT DO SO. THOSE WHO ARE IN THE REALM OF THE FLESH CANNOT PLEASE GOD.” I know the thought of abstaining from sex can seem like an impossible option for some, especially those who are not in a relationship with God, but when I understood what God was asking from me, It stopped feeling like a sacrifice! It started off by me understanding that my body was a temple. I know that is a concept that most are familiar with, but I truly understood that the temple (my body) is where the Holy Spirit resides, the Holy Spirit I received when I believed and accepted Jesus! When we accept Christ we are made into a new creation, its the Holy Spirit that renews us, and causes our desires to change, but we have to be obedient and allow the change to take place! GALATIONS 5:16 “SO I SAY, LET THE HOLY SPIRIT GUIDE YOUR LIVES. THEN YOU WON’T BE DOING WHAT YOUR SINFUL NATURE CRAVES.” When we really let the Holy Spirit guide us, all the things we thought we couldn’t live without become a memory of a past life! Your mind is renewed and your cravings change. Honestly it’s been over year of celibacy and I don’t think about sex! I feel differently about the act itself! Like I said before, I was casually giving my body away without any thought. Now I understand the intimacy of that act and how God intended me to experience it! God showed me that it’s a sacred act to be experienced between man and woman who make a covenant with each other and God in marriage. He showed me the two come together to become one flesh, and that’s how we honor Him in our unions! When you want to live to please God, the things that He hates start to become the things you hate! This is how we start to align ourselves with the will of God!

When I started to learn what it really meant to be a wife, and not in the worlds standard of what a good wife is, but God’s standard, I started to think about the roles we play in relationships! Suddenly the thought of being single seemed smart, and not for the reasons you might think, but because I realised that I had a lot of unlearning to do when it came to my idea of what a good relationship or partner looked like! Ultimately I needed to relearn what the word SUBMISSION meant now that I was a child of God. The word submission in culture today when it refers to women in relationships is viewed so negatively, that it is almost impossible to have these conversations and come to any agreement, especially when we live in a society that champions the women empowerment and feminist movement! Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for women’s rights, and fairness and equality, and I believe God is too! He never made us all in His likeness and image so that we could be at war with each other about who holds more importance, we are all equal, we just have different roles to play! We have a God of order, not of confusion! If God is calling me to submit to my future husband and I have a problem with it, then something is not right here! So before I could think about submission to the future man in my life, I had to learn to submit to God! Because if I can’t submit to God then what chance would I stand in my union?!? I started to look at submission as a good thing, not as a loss of self but a gain of self, a different kind of empowerment. If you read PROVERBS 31:10-31 in the Old Testament, you get an idea of what God views as a noble woman, a woman that God says deserves praise and to be rewarded, and its not a helpless woman who lives under the thumb of her husband! It’s a strong woman, who takes care of her family, is a business woman (a boss!) she is wise, she isn’t lazy, she is hard working! she enriches her husbands life, she instructs with kindness! Just to name a few things. This same woman, who is strong in mind, a boss, and wise still submits to her husband! My fears of submission, I realised came from my past traumas in relationships and encounters with men in my life, I found it hard to separate my experiences and pain. The things I experienced before I found Christ were still weighing on me heavily! I had to let that go and understand that I no longer had to carry that into my new life, and God would teach me what a man with a heart for Jesus would look like, and that would be how I would decide on who my future husband would be!

Photo by Asad Photo Maldives on Pexels.com

It takes a lot of work to change your list of requirements when looking for a partner. When your list is full of superficial wants that have nothing to with heart and character you are setting yourself up for a fall! Now my list is all about heart, about being equally yoked! I am asking about prayer life and relationship status with Jesus, because if I am called to submit to my husband he has to be in submission to God! If you are submitting to a husband who isn’t obedient to God first, you leave the door open for the enemy to enter and destroy! I know I am no marriage expert but I believe you don’t have to be to use the wisdom that God provides you when you read His Word. So to all my single ladies out here who really want to find a holy union, have patience, use this time to really grow in your relationship with God, learn to do what pleases Him and be obedient, because trust me God is using this time to shape and mold you so that you are the woman you need to be! He is making you into a Proverbs 31 woman! Read 1 CORINTHIANS 7:32-35, which basically tells us to use this time of singleness to serve the Lord because when you find your mate your earthly responsibilities of pleasing your partner will become more important! It’s because of this I am content with my season of singleness, I now see the benefits of this time! I know my Father knows what the desires of my heart is and he would not give me such desires which align with His sovereign will if He did not intend to full fill them! It’s because of this knowledge of God’s heart that I can wait patiently with a joyous heart of my own.

HOW DO WE KNOW WE ARE REALLY SAVED?

So this wasn’t what I planned to talk about this week, but life happens and sometimes God presses on your heart and you have to listen and respond with a YES. A lot happened this week, I had a scare with my mum which as you can imagine wasn’t fun, although we know that we are not immortals and death is guaranteed, it still doesn’t make it any easier to deal with! I am happy to report that my mum is alive and well, praise Jesus! But this led to an interesting conversation with my mum about her salvation! As you know I haven’t been on my faith journey for long, and I am still a new Christian compared to some, but my mum sincerely accepted Christ this year through faith and faith alone! Let me give you a little back story.

I have a close relationship with my mum, we talk practically everyday, we have a great friendship! So during my coming to Christ my mum knew everything, she was very supportive and encouraging! Through me God was reaching out to her, he was transforming her and she didn’t even realise! My mum had always believed you had to be perfect to come to Christ (this was bad teaching she experienced in her life having a brief encounter with Jehovah Witnesses) it was this belief that kept her away from God! She felt unworthy, and I remember her always saying “I need to get my life together first.” God used me to show her that He wanted her as she was, and that nobody would ever be perfect! As we all know covid happened, so a lot of plans had to get put on a shelf as the whole world shut down. I had initially hoped to get baptised in 2020 but that wasn’t possible so I put that on hold along with the rest of my life, I just used that time to continue to learn about Jesus and the goodness of God, sharing everything with my mum. During that time I prayed for her, asking God to soften her heart and to help her come to know Him!

God’s timing is always perfect! There is a good reason why I didn’t get baptised in 2020, God was still doing work in my mum! I got baptised in June 2021, and the week leading up to my baptism I prayed like I had never prayed before! I was going through my own feelings of unworthiness, the enemy was desperate, he was doing everything to sway me from my decision! That week I asked God to do something big on the day of my baptism, something so big that I couldn’t deny it was Him moving! When I think back on that time I laugh at the audacity and boldness I had to challenge my Father in that way, but My God is loving, full of grace and mercy, He understood my heart and what I needed at that time, and our God always gives us what we need! Jesus told his disciples “I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24) so that’s exactly what I was doing, I was believing with my whole heart that something would happen on that day! When the day of my baptism arrived I was excited, nervous, happy that my mum and brother were gonna be there to experience an important day of my new life. That morning as I was writing my testimony in preparation, my phone rang, I looked and saw my mum’s name on the screen, my first thought was she was calling to say she wouldn’t be able to make it (she suffers with arthritis, so sometimes she isn’t mobile) I answered the phone and she was tearful and emotional, of course I was worried thinking something had happened! I asked what was wrong? and her words were ” I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I woke up emotional and in tears, I am gonna bring extra clothes with me!” of course I was confused, and asked what did she mean bring extra clothes?! that’s when she said “I wanna get baptised!” I think that’s the first time I was truly overwhelmed and speechless! I told my mum YES!! God had answered my prayer, He had done something so big that I couldn’t deny him! That day me and my mum got baptised together! A day I will never forget! There is so much more I can say about what happened on that day but that isn’t the point of this post, I am showing you how she believed through faith, nothing more than pure faith! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “GOD SAVED YOU BY HIS GRACE WHEN YOU BELIEVED. AND YOU CAN’T TAKE CREDIT FOR THIS; IT IS A GIFT FROM GOD. SALVATION IS NOT A REWARD FOR THE GOOD THINGS WE HAVE DONE, SO NONE OF US CAN BOAST ABOUT IT.”

I remember sharing that verse with her before she got baptised, and I believe she truly received it because she came to Christ in confidence that no matter what she was doing with her life, God still wanted her! This kind of reminds me of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9) I really encourage you to read it if you haven’t before, but a basic summary of it is about how the Word affects us, whether it sticks to us, or it is snatched away from us (this is a very basic summary lol) My mum had forgotten that she was saved by grace, she had reverted back to her old way of thinking! So when her mortality was challenged this week and she considered life and death she believed that she wasn’t saved because she wasn’t doing any “works”, she hadn’t attended church for a couple of weeks and she wasn’t picking up her bible, she even admitted that she was having what I like to call “imposter syndrome” where you feel like you don’t belong. That’s when I realised the word had fallen on the surface, it had not taken root!

The thing we need to understand about this walk of faith is the adversary is very real! When we choose Christ and become children of God, he hates it! He starts to throw everything at us to break our spirit! He lies to us and tells us we are not worthy and God doesn’t want us! He is so desperate to corrupt our hearts and have us back in a life of sin, a life of death! We start to feel so under attack it can become very easy for us to reconsider the narrow road and exchange it for the wider more treaded path! But think of it this way, if you had thirty more years guaranteed on this earth, but after the thirty years are up you have eternity to contend with, what would be more important to you? thirty years or eternity? Would you trade your eternity with Jesus at the throne for thirty short years of a somewhat comfortable life? I know what I’m choosing! An eternity without Jesus is something I don’t even wanna think about! The Bible warns us of all of this, God show’s us in many ways the kind of afflictions we can be subjected to as Christians, but the great thing about the Bible is it tells us how to overcome it all! We just have to pick it up and read it! EPHESIANS 6:11 “PUT ON THE FULL ARMOUR OF GOD, SO THAT YOU CAN TAKE YOUR STAND AGAINST THE DEVIL’S SCHEMES.”

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, it is a spiritual one, against the powers of this dark world and the forces of evil! I know that may sound like a movie and the reality of it can invoke fear, but we have nothing to fear if we turn up to the battle fully equipped! God gives us the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit (which is the word of God) all while our feet our fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace! We have everything we need to slay our enemy, we are capable, we have the authority in the mighty name of JESUS! The enemy doesn’t want us to know this so he keeps us distracted so that we don’t arm ourselves the way God intended us by picking up our bibles! The enemy lies to us and makes us think we have no power, this is what keeps us in bondage!

The thing is we are all on our own journey’s, and they may all look a little different! We all arrive at our own revelation at some point, and that is ok because that is what shapes us, God uses it all to give Him the glory! But these are the last days, so please do not be asleep and miss our Lord all because you wasn’t prepared! You believed and received so you are saved! But that is only the start of your journey! God is calling you to seek Him, He wants to do so much in your life, He chose YOU! He knew you before He sent you into your mother’s womb! He loved you from then! That is a long time to love someone! And through it all, even when you were not perfect, and even now when you knowingly do what you shouldn’t He never stopped wanting you, His hand was always outstretched to you! When you start to move, when you put that faith that caused you to believe into action, watch Him move mountains in your life! You will start to experience Him like you could never imagine! Get to know Him, pick up your bible and discover how good He is! Whatever the enemy is throwing at you right now, trust and believe it is only for a short time, once you start to learn your true identity in Christ, you will have the power to overcome and the enemy has no other choice but to flee! I say this all with my mum in mind but this is for anyone who may be feeling weighed down! God is calling you! But will you answer?…..

FREEDOM FROM ANXIETY….THE SPIRIT OF FEAR!

Over the weekend God showed me that I had not fully surrendered myself when it came to dealing with my anxiety! All this time I thought I was truly free, I thought anxiety was a thing of the past! Technically it was as I hadn’t suffered with it for so long that I fooled myself into thinking I was truly over it, but the catch was I was still heavily relying on medication for it! before we go forward let me take you back to 2018.

Its important for you to know that I had no history of anxiety or depression before 2018, I didn’t even know what anxiety was until then, anxiety wasn’t something really talked about, it’s one of those things that people seem to suffer with privately. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and like a child of hard hearing I ignored doctors advise to use medication, in my defence I had tried some medication back in 2015 when I was first diagnosed, but I had an extreme reaction to it that resulted in me going to A&E with symptoms that were similar to someone going into cardiac arrest (oh the drama of it all!) So after being told to try something else I am sure you can understand why I was reluctant to and decided I would try to manage it myself! Well clearly I failed because by 2018 I found myself back in A&E, same symptoms as before but with blood pressure so high I was told I could have a stroke at any moment! To top it off on that same trip to A&E after having the routine blood test that they give you, when my results came back I was told they had found what looked like a blood clot on my lung!(again, the drama of it all!) After having a scan, being prodded and mishandled by the NHS, and having to inject myself with blood thinners for 3 days, when I received the results of my scan it came back as normal. It was at this point anxiety reared its ugly head! The fear of “what if…” started to set in, I remember my biggest question about my health being “if I don’t have a blood clot, what was up with my first results that said I did??” then it morphed into “I must have something wrong with me, it’s just not a blood clot!” I spiralled out of control at that point, and after numerous visits to my doctor who at the time was THE WORST, I was dismissed and told I was fine without further investigation. I fell in to a dark place from that point, every time I had a palpitation it set me into a panic! I remember one week being in A&E three times because of panic attacks! I was scared to sleep because I feared I wouldn’t wake up, it got so bad that I needed my mum to stay with me because I couldn’t sleep in bed alone. My doctor ended up signing me off work for two months because I was mentally unfit for duty! That’s how bad it got.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

It was at my next doctors appointment that I was offered anti-depressants, now I knew enough to know I didn’t want to take them, as I heard they could be quite addictive, plus I knew I wasn’t depressed! I was just sure I was dying (so dramatic lol) I remember after that appointment I was convinced it was my GP surgery that was the true villain of my story so I found a new practice and spoke to someone new. At this point the severity of my anxiety had reduced where I could sleep alone and was ready to return to normality, even though I was still easily triggered! I remember going to the cinema with friends one night and having a complete meltdown at the start of the movie because it was so loud it caused my seat to vibrate and that, for some unknown reason triggered my anxiety! The only way I could sit through it was to put my headphones in my ears to reduce the sound, after that I didn’t go to the cinema for a very long time out of fear! My new doctor suggested medication I could take that would help to prevent the physical symptoms I was experiencing, since I was assured they would have no affect on my mood, I started to take them! They worked, they reduced some of my physical symptoms so I was able to get a better control of my anxiety. But it never left, I still suffered, I was still triggered, and sleep became a myth because I still carried this fear of dying in my sleep. I just accepted that this was my life now, and I would just have to get used to it! PROVERB 12:25 “ANXIETY IN A PERSON’S HEART WEIGHS IT DOWN, BUT A GOOD WORD CHEERS IT UP.” My anxiety began to control me, I always had to consider my anxiety when doing anything social, I missed out on a lot of things because the fear of “what if…” I just wasn’t the same person! Now let me just say it’s normal to experience anxiety, Life can be like that, but it is not meant to control you!

When I first came to Christ in 2019 I was still sure anxiety was gonna be apart of my life! I was getting to know God and as I got to know Him, TRUST began to build (like it does in any good relationship!) Fear causes us to doubt, and that has been the enemies tactic since Eve in the garden of Eden! 2 TIMOTHY 1 “FOR GOD GAVE US A SPIRIT NOT OF FEAR BUT OF POWER AND LOVE AND SELF-CONTROL.” This verse is what put things in to perspective for me on my journey! I realised that if I was calling myself a child of God, there was no way I should be letting anxiety control me, because what was really going on was that I had allowed the enemy to control me! That scared me but it was the scare I needed to realise I couldn’t have this bondage over me anymore! The enemy might have had control before, but now because of the mighty name of JESUS I had the authority to get rid of that spirit! I had to really start getting into my bible, I had to start a spiritual discipline for myself to get into the habit of reading everyday, and it wasn’t anything major to begin with, it could of been a chapter a day, but I was making the effort to feed myself spiritually, just like you feed your body daily to survive we must also feed our spirits daily to survive, because after all we are in a spiritual battle! JESUS said “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God.” (Matthew 4:4) If we are honest there are a lot of mal-nourished Christians out here, and that’s not a judgment but an observation, even I could do better in that department!

I started to notice that my anxiety started to lessen, we went from being best friends, joint at the hip, to friends that got together occasionally for a life catch up and gossip. The more I began to TRUST and BELIEVE in Him, the more I discovered my identity in Christ and what that meant for my life, I started to sleep easier, and before I knew it six months had passed without a whisper from my old pal anxiety! Death was no longer a concern for me, because I had a greater understanding of what eternity meant for me now I was a believer! JAMES 4:7 “SUBMIT YOURSELVES THEREFORE TO GOD. RESIST THE DEVIL, AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU.” That’s exactly what happened! It’s really that simple but we tend to make it much harder than it need be.

Now lets fast forward to present day, like I said before I haven’t suffered with anxiety for a long time, and that’s saying something considering we all just experienced and are still experiencing the most trying time of our generation! This has anxiety alert written all over it! Yet I have not folded, not even once. My mind has been the most sound and at peace considering I have had to go out everyday to work consistently while a potentially fatal virus rages around me, and it’s because of this I know God orchestrated everything leading up to this pandemic because honestly I don’t know how I would have managed if I was still bound! He called me when He did because He knew I would need Him now the most! I say thank you, and thank you some more to Him daily! During my claim to freedom, God showed me that my faith was not complete! Well this whole time I had still been taking my anxiety medication, to be clear I take multiple medications for various things because I am literally falling apart lol So it’s become a habit to pop my pills without thought. I order my meds online because that’s the “thing” these days, and because I take so many I have a repeat prescription. Now please tell me why, of all times my meds were delayed?! Causing me to run out and be without! And please tell me why the only medication I ran out of was my anxiety pills!?! Bare in mind I receive the same amount of meds each delivery, so the fact that I don’t have these particular pills gave me the “Ah hah!” moment, a revelation that I still had trust issues! The Holy Spirit revealed that I had a little more work to do in that department! JAMES 2:22 “YOU SEE, HIS FAITH AND HIS ACTIONS WORKED TOGETHER. HIS ACTIONS MADE HIS FAITH COMPLETE.” This verse refers to Abraham being shown to be right with God because he offered his son to be sacrificed, trusting in God fully, a true act of faith! As I lay in bed feeling the stress of the unknown start to build in my chest, I broke down into tears at the realisation that I wasn’t truly free because my actions were not in line with my claim to faith! But I knew deep down in my heart that I was gonna be ok because I knew that God was testing me, He was asking me to truly let go and trust him! And after a tearful and heart felt prayer after reading that James verse, I some how let it all go! Its been a week without any anxiety pills, “we did it Joe!” (insert Kamala Harris meme here)

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

I know now that I didn’t need them, I was hanging onto them like a “break in case of emergency” safety net! But it was all in my sub conscious, because honestly it didn’t register that I was still relying on them! This is why we have the best helper, the Holy Spirit! My heart is in the process of restoration, it is hard, it is making me truly deal with my traumas and I am receiving healing! It is difficult but remember the things that are best for us tend to be. What I was reminded of was faith = action! We can’t claim to believe in God and his promise for us, but we still hold on to fears, we let these fears control us, letting these fears cause us to doubt our Father who doesn’t lie! Now we start to second guess and start trusting in our own feelings, rather than the Word of God! Remember in my previous post I mentioned how our feelings were not facts and how we can’t always trust our hearts, as the bible refers to our hearts as deceitful! Remember faith is acting like God is telling the truth, so take a moment, do a heart check, and ask yourself these important questions, do you live like you believe God is telling the truth? Do your feet move in sync with your faith? This walk with God is impossible without true faith! Our Father is reliable! Our Father is faithful! Our Father is trustworthy! And most of all our Father LOVES us! So whatever you are holding on to, let it go today! It will be the best thing you ever do!

THE CHURCH IS NOT A BUILDING….IT’S YOU!

First let me start off by saying Christians are not perfect. Did you catch that? Let me say it again for the people in the back, CHRISTIANS ARE NOT PERFECT! Ok now I’ve got that out of the way I can move on. That took me a while to grasp myself, for a long time I assumed Christians were meant to be perfect people, holding themselves to a standard that us mere mortals could never achieve! I thought “CHURCH” was this building where all these perfect people came together to praise God and look down on all the unsaved people who weren’t apart of this members only club! When that is your view of church, it doesn’t sound that appealing does it? So it’s no surprise that I never saw myself as a church goer. I can count the times I stepped foot in a church in my life on one hand (before I came to Christ) Like I said before I had urges to know God, but unfortunately the one time in my adult life I found myself attending a service, I left feeling unmoved. I remember feeling that everyone was fake and the only thing that seemed to matter to these people was who was wearing what! I never expected church to feel like a fashion show, or a parade of wealth that didn’t seem to give any glory to God! Nobody seemed particularly welcoming and I left feeling like church was full of hypocrites! Imagine Monday through to Saturday your neighbour Mary or John from up the street supposedly being Christians, but nothing about their daily lives reflected a Christ like nature, they weren’t loving to their neighbours, they gossiped about everyone, they only helped themselves, but come Sunday morning they were the first arrivals at service?! When your expectations of church involve the word “perfect” when you meet the John’s and Mary’s you can’t help but feel the idea of church is pointless and not worth getting up for. That’s definitely how I felt about it, I was one of those people that said “I don’t need to go to church to praise God, I can do it from my home” But I didn’t say that because I really knew what I was talking about, remember I had no biblical knowledge at that point, I just used it as a way to validate my reasons for not getting up early, and I found other people just as clueless as myself to strengthen my opinions, talk about the blind leading the blind!

So imagine my surprise when two months into confessing my allegiance to Jesus that I felt the Holy Spirit moving me to find a church! At first I tried to ignore that pull, but you can not ignore God, which I learned very quickly! The more I continued with my Bible study the more I was convicted that I NEEDED a church! Ultimately what I was really craving was a sense of community. My coming to Christ wasn’t your typical story, I had built relationships with fellow believers that lived overseas! It was ok when it came to the odd Whatsapp call or message but I still felt lonely and isolated. Having friends but feeling lonely is a trip! All my friends I had here were not religious, or not believers. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 “THEREFORE, IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, THE NEW CREATION HAS COME: THE OLD HAS GONE, THE NEW IS HERE!” When you accept Christ and allow the change that comes with it, it’s impossible to stay the same person! You naturally start to feel the need to be around people who have the same core beliefs and things in common (That’s another blog post cause we need to discuss how hard those changes can be)

People make up a community, people make up a church, church is community! Church wasn’t designed to be just something you “Do” on a Sunday, church wasn’t meant to be something you do in a list of things, which really is just you doing works to secure a place in heaven, to avoid eternal damnation. How many Christians have you come across that actually believe if you don’t go to church that means you are not saved? I’ve heard people say that they have been told this! These same people who are quick to tell you about your salvation might feel righteous because they attend church every Sunday but all week they live in the spirit of unforgiveness and pride, but you’re the one with a salvation problem! The minds of some baffle me! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “FOR IT IS BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED, THROUGH FAITH- AND THIS IS NOT FROM YOURSELVES, IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD- NOT BY WORKS, SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST.” So now we know that your attendance at church is not dependant on your salvation, lets talk about why we should go to church.

God didn’t create us to be lone ranger Christians! Our Triune God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, designed us to be in relationship with Him and others! It’s no coincidence that the whole Bible or law is summed up to this, love your neighbour as yourself! (GALATIANS 5:14) When Covid hit in 2020 and lockdowns were implemented, I felt the church was truly tested, churches had never closed their doors before and we were tasked to think outside the box so that we could still find ways to do community worship. I realised then that church was more than a building, here I was watching online services on a Sunday from the comforts of my bedroom, technically in attendance but the feeling was definitely different. Congregations gathered in outdoor spaces, like public parks in some countries, they had their whole services like this, not enclosed in brick and mortar but they were still a church! What made the church was the congregation! The church is the body of Christ and Jesus is the head of that body! The body is made up of believers of Christ, and Christ is the head, the One that leads us! (EPHESIANS 1:22-23)

Think about YOUR body, every part of your body is functional and has a purpose, some parts would have more impact on your life if they were to stop working than others but every part is just as important! Now if we transfer that analogy to the body of believers that make up the church, the body of Christ, that should tell us that we have a responsibility to be more than just church attendees, we all have a role to play, and its not exclusively just for the pastors, church leaders and worship teams! As believers we know that the Holy Spirit lives within us, He distributes gifts to us, and we are called to use these gifts, whether it be the gift of healing, wisdom, words of encouragement to build faith, knowledge, or prophecy to name a few, we are called to use them to edify the church, and these same gifts help us to share the Gospel! So our presence when we attend church should be felt, we should be active members within our churches, and when I say active I mean taking part in fellowship with each other, reaching out to other members, building relationships. If we all operated in this way, when someone new shows up on a Sunday, we would naturally make them feel welcomed, showing them what church is really about, giving them a feel of what community is meant to be, now church becomes something you look forward to, not something you numbly experience.

Life is hard, but life is even harder when you accept Christ! So why would you want to do it alone? We need a community of believers who we can come to for wisdom, counselling, encouragement, knowledge, a place where we can communally worship and honour God and really sit in his presence, not like we can’t sit in His presence on our own but there is something powerful about being in a group of people all calling out to God and praising his name, it really changes the atmosphere of the room! This world is designed to lead us astray, to make us question our faith, it’s very easy to let culture infiltrate the standards that God expects us to hold true, we start to compromise ourselves, then instead of walking like Christ, we start to live like everyone else and the light that Jesus called us to be starts to dim, our views start to become worldly and worldliness is just the absence of God! Once we start down that slippery path it becomes very easy for us to fall away from the faith, because the moral of the story is we need a community, we need our brothers and sisters in Christ to keep us on this narrow road which is not easy to tread! This is why WE NEED CHURCH!

Like I said before we are not perfect, the bible tells us in 1 JOHN 1:8 “IF WE CLAIM TO BE WITHOUT SIN, WE DECEIVE OURSELVES AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US.” So bare that in mind when dealing with your fellow brothers and sisters. I know there is a lot of church hurt out there, and there is a lot of unsavoury stories when it comes to the history of some churches, but to me that is just confirmation that perfection doesn’t exist, only Jesus can hold that title! I urge you to find your community, it makes such a difference to your walk. Since I found my Church it has really become a family to me, don’t be mistaken, I prayed over finding a good church, every time I went, my prayer was always for God to plant my feet firmly at my church if this was where He called me to be! I listened intently to the word given and made sure it was God’s word (the importance of Christians knowing their word is also another blog post I need to explore) In no time God ushered me into my church and I am now a part of my worship team, even a few weeks ago I had the privilege of giving my first sermon/word of encouragement, which still baffles me to this day! God has really been present in my life and he is definitely present in my church! I have grown so much more in my faith because of my church, I definitely wouldn’t have experienced the growth I have without it! We need Church like the sick need the hospital, we can bandage ourselves to a certain degree at home with our first aid kits but if we want true healing we need our doctors, and hospitals are where we find them, we need our check ups from our GP’s! So think of the church like going to see our GP for a weekly check up, or think of Church like going to hospital because we are sick and need heart surgery, and our surgeon is King Jesus! Just like we can’t do without hospitals, in that same way know we can’t do without churches!

WHO AM I?…..

The question that everyone asks themselves at some point in their life! When you don’t subscribe to any belief system (like I used to) that question can haunt you like a toxic ex that hits you up every couple of years with a “hi bighead” I remember having many seasons of feeling unfulfilled with life, lack of purpose, always in the pursuit of happiness and failing. We are always working towards “something”, but that “something” is never really the true prize because once we achieve that “something” a new target is set, then we ride that roller-coaster again! No wonder depression and anxiety is at an all time high. Life becomes exhausting and unsatisfying, and I haven’t even added relationships into the mix!

Before I found my identity in Christ, I felt like a failure! My standards or judgments on who I should be were heavily influenced by culture/society, what they deemed as successfully adulting and winning at life! I am in my late 30’s, no children, unmarried and single (couldn’t even date successfully), don’t own property (I rent a room), all the things society looks down at you for! I only really felt appeased because I had a decent paying job, but it was just that, a job! I was on my own roller-coaster of life and I was not enjoying it! The first truth that God revealed to me, was that culture was wrong! My worth was not based on material things or titles! Do you realise how freeing it is to let that go?? That invisible weight that I carried on my shoulders for years, gone! This timeline of life that the world works on is unrealistic, its dated and holds no relevance to the life of the modern day man/woman! But lets throw God into the mix, and when you consider that a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day to God as it says in 2 Peter 3:8 then its fair to say our perception of time is invalid! It was learning that God’s timeline and my timeline were never gonna be in sync that brought real clarity! It was realising that I was right where I was meant to be, it was learning that God had a kingdom purpose for my life and He was waiting for ME to come into alignment with His will!

All these things helped me to shed the shackles that Mary, Mary sang about. Not to say that I am free of all “shackles” I’ve got a lot of work to do still! BUT the one bondage that seems to be on everyone’s lips these days “IDENTITY” no longer keeps me bound! Consider how important the topic of identity is today, there are plenty of “groups” who feel unaccepted because of how they identify, whether its your sexuality or gender, or even race, the conversation seems to be in constant rotation! I’ve spent countless conversations trying to make people see that I’m more than the colour of my skin, and I can tell you that I’m tired of THAT conversation! I don’t know what was worse, my own perception of my identity or other peoples perception of how they identified ME! Now, I can’t imagine my whole identity being based on something that can be taken away, or on something that isn’t constant. Not to trivialise the feelings and experiences of others, because I’ve been there and done that, but I’ve learned that feelings are not facts! And our feelings mostly stem from the desires of our flesh!

JEREMIAH 17:9 “THE HUMAN HEART IS THE MOST DECEITFUL OF ALL THINGS, AND DESPERATELY WICKED. WHO REALLY KNOWS HOW BAD IT IS?” The desires of the heart can be a dangerous thing! We constantly have to exercise discernment when it comes to how we “feel” about a thing, we are so fickle, we live in the age of cancel culture, where in one day you can go from the most loved, to the most hated! Give it six months nobody even remembers why you were even “cancelled”. We start living for the approval and validation of others, and we lose ourselves in the process! When we RECEIVE and BELIEVE in His name (JESUS) we have the right to be called children of God! When we become children of God we recognise that we are made in the image/likeness of God, and we stop living for ourselves, we die to our old selves and we are made new, our validation comes from God not fickle (hu)man! 2 CORINTHIANS 5:15 “AND HE DIED FOR ALL, THAT THOSE WHO LIVE SHOULD NO LONGER LIVE FOR THEMSELVES BUT FOR HIM WHO DIED FOR THEM AND WAS RAISED AGAIN.” Doesn’t get much clearer than that does it!? The hard part is accepting that YOU are no longer in control, but giving it all over to God. That has been a process for me, and still is if I’m honest! I’m constantly reminding myself I am not the God of my life!

My identity is now in Christ! I no longer live for myself! I am no longer in control! My old life has gone, my new life has begun! I am a child of God and I answer to my heavenly Father who is constant and never changes! He calls me to be the light and salt of the earth, to share that God loves YOU so much that he sacrificed His only Son so that He could be reconciled with you because He desires a relationship with His children! 2 CORINTHIANS 5:18 “AND ALL THIS IS A GIFT FROM GOD, WHO BROUGHT US BACK TO HIMSELF THROUGH CHRIST. AND GOD HAS GIVEN US THIS TASK OF RECONCILING PEOPLE TO HIM.” Being a Christian gives me identity and purpose, and my purpose has nothing to do with material things or status, it has nothing to do with what others feel, or even what I feel! Part of the journey/walk with JESUS includes constantly reminding myself of this. We are human and we are not gonna get it right all the time, we are not perfect, only JESUS could remain perfect in his human form because he was God wrapped up in flesh! We are not God’s! There is only one God! And He has enough GRACE for us to love us beyond our mistakes, He is not fickle! So we need to have enough GRACE for ourselves when we forget WHO WE ARE! The enemy is constantly working to confuse us and cast doubt! Its hard out here in these sanctified streets! The only advise I can offer anyone struggling with identity is to seek your Father! Learn about who JESUS is and what he did on the cross! Only when we discover the identity of JESUS CHRIST do we truly discover OURSELVES!

BACK IN NOVEMBER 2019…

Before I start on this journey it is only right that I start from the beginning. Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Cerise, I’m a black single female who found Jesus in November 2019. Now my story is not extraordinary, and for that reason I suspect some might find it relatable, or maybe not *shrugs shoulders* but before you understand where I am at present, you need to know where I came from.

Its funny how God reaches out to you from the most unexpected of places! At 38 yrs old I was enjoying a karaoke app named “Smule”. Now I had been on that app for a solid 5 years! If you enjoy singing, and enjoy meeting new people then this app is very addictive and it consumed a lot of my free time. But still God found me…. I started singing regularly with a guy from the USA ( yes there is always a guy involved *rolls eyes*) not only did we sound great together, we got on very well and became fast friends. Our friendship blossomed very quickly that we started to communicate outside of the app. Now I know you are thinking where does God come into this, well my new friend was a Christian! We had a long distance friendship as I am from the UK, but we spoke everyday! Every so often my friend would share stories from the bible, sounds very random but the way he told them always brought them into the 21st century. He was well aware that I was not a Christian, but he never treated me less than, or made me feel like I was excluded from some special club. He didn’t preach at me, you know like how you see some of the street proclaimers who aggressively scream in peoples faces about repenting, or meeting your end in a pit of flames! He actually never went out of his way to evangelise me like you might think either, what he did was so much better! What he did was share what God had done in HIS life, the life he used to live, the man he used to be, the freedom he found that only comes with following JESUS!

I believed in a God, I knew there was no such thing as evolution, I knew that there had to be something more in this world, the intelligence that comes from constructing this earth was no accident! But even though I believed in A God, I didn’t know what that meant to my life! Who was God, and what did he want from me? In the past I have had strong urges to want to find God, but being that I had nobody around me that subscribed to any kind of doctrine I never knew what to do about it or where to even start! So I carried on and everyday life became a distraction (the enemy is crafty like that)

ACTS 2:39 THE PROMISE IS FOR YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN AND FOR ALL WHO ARE FAR OFF- FOR ALL WHOM THE LORD OUR GOD WILL CALL. When the Apostle Peter was addressing the crowd telling them what they needed to do for forgiveness of their sins, that last part struck me! GOD CALLS YOU! There are plenty of verses that talk about Gods calling that are probably better examples like MATTHEW 22:14, I’m just currently reading the book of ACTS right now. But really consider that, he calls us! Do you ever find yourself drawn to know God? maybe you are a believer maybe you are not, but think back in your life, have you ever felt the pull/call of God? I realised in that moment that those random urges I felt in the past to know God was actually God calling me! But I never answered. The enemy is like bad reception on a phone call, God rings your phone, and you try to answer but the enemy runs interference and now the call is breaking up and you can’t hear a thing, so you hang up! Well praise JESUS I finally answered!

Now I had a very distorted view of what the Bible was, it’s purpose and what it said. Ask me where these ideas came from, I can’t even really tell you! I guess I would say it was a mixture of other peoples OPINION, what I FELT, and what the CULTURE we live in told me! I felt so strongly about these feelings/opinions that didn’t even originate from my thoughts, how strange right!? I always considered myself a fair person, never made judgments based on other peoples opinion before, so why was I doing it now? The problem was anytime I had biblical questions I always found Christians clueless! Now I’m not saying all Christians lack knowledge, I’m just saying I could tell by the response I got when asking questions that there was a disconnect. Unfortunately all that did was make me feel I was right, and my feelings were justified.

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Now where was I? Oh yes, my friend was a Christian! Not only was he a Christian, he was a Christian who read his bible, spent time in Gods word and knew more than any Christian I had ever come across before! He was able to provide so much clarity to my thoughts, always giving context to scripture he presented! Having a new take on the bible I wanted to know and understand more! I always had this impression that the bible was boring, dated text that had no relevance to life as we know it, oh how wrong I was! So the beginning of November I made the decision to purchase my first bible. My intention was to just read it, I wanted to see what else it said, I still had other thoughts and feelings that needed answers! If I’m really honest part of me was reading it to still validate what I thought I knew to be truth. I didn’t read it to come to Christ, but to satisfy my own need to be right! Well God sure showed me! With the help and assistance from my friend I started reading it everyday. By the end of November I told my friend “I think I might be a Christian!?!”

I can’t explain the power of God! I just know its real! In that moment I had never felt so sure about anything, never felt so convicted before! I decided that I needed JESUS! I guess the rest is history. Here I am almost 2 years in my walk with Christ, still learning so much (do you ever really stop learning?!) feeling like a real toddler. I am learning that being in Christ is nothing to do with religion but its all about relationship, and just like any relationship, what you put in is what you get out! It’s not been easy, but JESUS warned us the righteous road would be narrow, I just underestimated how narrow it would be. The narrow road has brought me so many blessings, blessings that have made the journey worth it! I could never go back to my old life, I wouldn’t even want to! I lived in so much bondage in my past life, not to say life is peaches and cream now, I still have strongholds that I am battling with, but I know that I will overcome them in the mighty name of JESUS! So welcome to MY CONVICTIONS. This is a safe place where I share my thoughts and feelings on my new life with Christ, how I am constantly convicted during my restoration, basically a journal that nobody asked for! Lets normalise being honest with our walks! If it inspires one person to seek their Father, then my work here is done!