In need of guidance and healing

[stef]

This is all going to sound very loaded, but I just don't know what to do or where to go. I feel like I'm drowning in myself and my life and I don't know how to come to the surface and breathe in LIFE, the Living Water of Jesus Christ. I feel so overwhelmed, so angry and bitter most of the time. I spend time criticizing myself and others, most of the time just silently in my mind but sometimes when I'm frustrated I let the words slip out and find myself in a whirlwind of slander and I can't stop. I feel myself being consumed by darkness and I feel powerless to stop it. I need my God to break through for me. And I need to feel it in my heart that He is mine, that He loves me and isn't letting go. I need to feel that even though times are tough and I feel helpless, He has it all in His hands and everything is for good.

If you could, please pray for me to be filled with the light and power that only God can give. Please pray that I be completely transformed by His love from the inside out. Please pray that I find the strength to let go of all of these hurts I've been harboring inside for years. I need restored faith in God, first and foremost, but also I need to have faith in His people and myself, too. I'm so sick of the guilt and the weight and the pain. Please pray that I be reminded that IT IS FINISHED, that this isn't my battle to fight, and that I have everlasting and victorious life in Jesus.

I know this is all so very vague, but I find it exhausting to go into details because they're all strung together by years and years of pain that I've just been trying to forget for so long. I've come to realize that pretending the pain isn't there doesn't make it hurt any less. I may expand in a follow-up post, but for now I'm just in desperate need of God, His word, His promises, and prayer.

Thank you,
Stefanie

 

[gdemoss]

For a long time I was very bitter and angry with everyone around me. I judged them all according to what I perceived to be right and wrong. Romans chapter 2 was referring to me when it spoke of one who was harboring up wrath against the day of wrath. I was headed on a crash course with judgment by God that I would not escape. My own faults were to many to number yet I held much against the rest of the human race.

One day I found myself at the feet of the cross, full of sin and suffering and self loathing. I had become the ugliest moral human being I knew. I called upon the name of the Lord for deliverance. I begged that he would come into my heart and straighten out the whole mess. I was instantly relieved of all of my burdens and walked that way for some time. Bitterness and judgmentalism and pride began to swell up in me over time as I walked a path that didn't correspond to the profession that I made that day. But God stopped me yet again and asked me about Jesus words about forgiveness, that I was to forgive as I was forgiven. I truly saw Christ clearly as the one who imputed no sin on anyone who sinned against him but rather gave place to judgement that would come in the end of the world. Christ saw people for who they were. He saw their end. I began to do the same. I began to understand that the one who lashed out at me, the one who drove like an idiot, the one who ____________ insert sinful behavior here were all headed for judgment. I was given the opportunity to do as Christ has done and set the example by resisting sin, if even unto blood, for the sake of the one who gave his life for me and loves his creation.

So today is different, through the Word of God, I understand the complexity of the war that I am in. How I must fight against principalities and powers. How I have, within my body, sin that wants to rule over me but I must rule over it. I have a spirit that can be exercised to mortify the deeds of my flesh as it is taught by the Holy Spirit of the living God who dwells in me, his temple. How I have a heart that Satan and his devils work to try to fill with evil but I can resist so that they flee from me.

In hindsight, I was being destroyed by lack of knowledge of what truly was going on around and within me. Today, I rely upon the knowledge of the person of Jesus Christ to keep me from living in error to the desires of my flesh. I thank God the Father who sent his Son in the first place that I might have life and that more abundantly.

Today I can honestly say that there is no one that I hold any ill will toward. I have put away all anger, wrath and evil speaking from me through the grace of God that I have received.

In Jesus Name,

Gary