Mikki's Blog - Living in the Grace and Love of God » Grace

Are You Willing to Face Your Struggles?

Mikki — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 13:56:52 +0000

What have you struggled with lately? Fear? Anger? Resentment? Unforgiveness? Pride? The list of human issues is endless, but the common truth is that none of us are completely “whole”. None of us have arrived at perfection.

We who are believers in Christ are on a life-long journey to become more like him. Along with David, we long for the day when we awake “satisfied” because we are finally in his likeness (Psalm 17:15).

There are many ways that we can choose to deal with our struggles, whether they are relational, financial, emotional, physical, mental or spiritual. Sometimes our “go to” mentality is that our problems are always someone else’s fault; we blame. At other times, we deny we have any issues. We try to ignore them; we push them down into our emotional abyss. Other times we exaggerate them or minimize them.

The more difficult and more honest path is the path of allowing God’s Holy Spirit to show us our “sore spots”. We could probably ask a close friend and they could name our issues for us! As a matter of fact, it is good to periodically check in with those who are close to us, those we trust deeply, about their observations of our life. Be sure you are ready for the truth if you do this, and then take whatever is shared to God and ask His opinion of it.

This process of facing our struggles does begin with naming them. When I can recognize and name my struggles, then I can access the power of the Holy Spirit to begin to face them and begin the process of change.

Naming and recognizing our struggles leads us to identify our patterns of wrong behavior and thinking – which we repeat despite our best judgment. Bringing these struggles into our consciousness allows us to begin to understand ourselves in ways which leads us to grow from adversity and turn our struggles into strength.

Change is a process. When we have had long-standing patterns of thinking and feeling, these patterns don’t usually change overnight. There are times when God just sovereignly touches us and we experience freedom. Thank God for those times!

However, at other times, we must wrestle through the daily challenges of denying our flesh, recognizing our woundedness and imperfections, and choose God’s answers and His pathways.

This wrestling leads us to deep understanding and we eventually find that the understanding has indeed deepened from just a mental assent to an inner knowing. As we experience the pain of our struggles, the answers we find become our own and not just something our preacher told us or that we read in a book (and those things are good in their place but cannot replace our personal journey).

One popular song declares that freedom is never free. I find this to be true. Christ paid the ultimate price for our freedom. His truth brings us into freedom. Freedom is costly. Just as our soldiers pay a high price for us to maintain our American freedoms, we as Christian soldiers must also do the hard work required to truly know our own hearts, name our own struggles, and cooperate with the Holy Spirit to gain freedom.

This is not a grace versus works message. I am a 100% believer in grace. It is the grace of God which allows us to change.

Will you ask God to show you your “sore spots”? Your unhealed places? Your ungodly patterns?

When He does, He will also give you the grace you need to begin the change process. I like to remind people that God convicts and leads us to change; Satan condemns and tells us we are hopeless. It is important that you keep that knowledge on your radar screen so that you can identify the voice speaking to you.

Quiet your heart and mind today and ask God to bring the light of His Spirit. The end result of the process will be deep and meaningful change.

Do you want that?

Ask, and get ready for change because God is committed to transform us into the image of His dear Son. He is just waiting for your willing heart to join Him in the work.

Are You Willing to Face Your Struggles?

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Jesus, the Healer of Broken Hearts

Mikki — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:54:29 +0000

If we believe that God is purposeful in His actions, then how significant is the fact that the first words of the first message Jesus preached were, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because … He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted…”? (Luke 4:18-19)

Jesus came to heal broken hearts and not only as a side benefit; it’s one of his life purposes! That’s good news because all of us who are in this world have experienced the pain of having our hearts broken in one way or another. If we look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels, we find that he moves throughout his days interacting with humanity and healing broken hearts. That healing takes many expressions. Today I want to look at how Jesus healed the heart of a woman as recorded in John 4 and what that healing means for us now.

Let’s take a look at the story.

Jesus was exhausted from his long trip. He had gone to the city well to get a drink of water. However, what followed was not a chance happening at all because we are told that Jesus “needed” to go through the region of Samaria; he was compelled to do so.

Jews did not have anything to do with Samaritans in those days. Samaritans were considered half-breeds and unclean by Jewish tradition. Yet Jesus, a Jew, chose to go through the middle of Samaria instead of making the usual trip around the area as most Jews did in order to avoid the Samaritans.

Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman at the well. He broke cultural and religious rules by speaking to her. Men didn’t speak to women in public in those days and a Jewish man certainly would not speak to a Samaritan woman. What transpired changed her life.

Jesus navigated through the woman’s resistance and avoidance and brought up a major issue of her life, not to condemn her, but in order to heal her. Jesus spelled out that she had had five husbands and was now living with a sixth man. The Samaritan woman yet again tried to avoid her heart issues, but Jesus persisted. He revealed Himself to her as the “Christ”.

He first encountered her in his humanity, a man who was thirsty and tired. He bridged cultural and religious differences in order to “do the will of Him who sent me” (vs. 34). He confronted her avoidance and resistance, bringing her life story into the light and then offering her “living water”. In essence, Jesus communicated to her that there was nothing about her that would prevent her from having a relationship with God; not her religious background, her cultural background, nor her personal history.

Although the story doesn’t specifically tell us, I believe the woman took Jesus’ offer. Amazingly, we see her leading many to believe in Jesus because of her “testimony” – There is a man who knows all about me and didn’t reject me; he gave me life-giving water.

He healed her heart. Jesus dealt with her shame. He dealt with her guilt. He cut through the religious, cultural traps and did the will of God, offering healing to the broken hearted.

He is still the same today. He is offering life and healing to all the thirsty, empty, broken-hearted.

Do you need his healing? Allow your resistance and avoidance to fall away. Lay down any religious, cultural, or matters of personal history which you believe disqualify you from knowing God and/or receiving His healing for your heart. Allow Jesus to move you past your shame and guilt and into the living waters.

He desires to purposefully encounter your heart right now. Your heart is important to him. Your heart and my heart were the hearts he was talking about when he said he had come to heal the broken-hearted.

Are you spiritually thirsty? Jesus freely offers living water. Drink deeply of the rivers of this living water for its flow will heal the broken places in your heart.

And may the Church represent Jesus well and offer the same to all today: healing, regardless of personal history, cultural background, or religious beliefs. When we do, we will find that his living water refreshes and restores and testimonies of his grace will lead others to him as well.

Jesus, the Healer of Broken Hearts

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Seeing Through the Eyes of Grace

Mikki — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:18:31 +0000

For many years I have begun each day by reading God’s Word. I have had a deep realization that I must live my life in dependence upon God because He is the only source of my strength. I have lived with the knowledge that without Him I can do nothing.

Last year I found myself, as a Christian leader, sitting in a counselor’s office examining my deepest motivations. I shared with the counselor my pain and how I felt unable to read my Bible and pray because I felt betrayed by God Himself. I shared how I had been completely devoted to God for so many years. How I never began a day without reading the Word. How I knew I could not stray from His side or else I would surely fall into sin. My counselor responded in a way that has troubled me ever since. He said, “And you could be walking with God and fall.” Like a dagger, his words pierced my heart. The Holy Spirit confirmed the truth of it. The ripples of my personal earthquake continued. I looked deeply into my own heart. It was true. Somehow, in the effort to lean on God, what I had really done was lean on my ability to lean on God.

Now that might sound like a matter of semantics, but there is a difference. For me it was a moment of revelation. And I found myself exposed in the eyes of God. This passage explains it best:

Hebrews 4:12-13 (Amplified Bible)

12For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power [making it active, operative, energizing, and effective]; it is sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating to the dividing line of the [a]breath of life (soul) and [the immortal] spirit, and of joints and marrow [of the deepest parts of our nature], exposing and sifting and analyzing and judging the very thoughts and purposes of the heart.

13And not a creature exists that is concealed from His sight, but all things are open and exposed, naked and defenseless to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do.

God had come and divided between the thoughts and purposes of my heart. I was open and exposed, naked and defenseless before my God.

Truly it takes the Spirit of God to judge our hearts. We cannot trust our own motivations and thoughts. And I thought I understood that. That was the very reason I was so devoted. Because I had no trust in myself. Hmmm.

Subtle. A subtle difference. The difference between works and grace. The difference between me controlling my works and motivations and thoughts and God controlling them.

Although I realize this may be confusing, I pray you will ponder what I am saying. Our tendency as humans is to depend upon ourselves. We really hate having to deny ourselves.

Grace. God giving us the ability to live as humans full of the Spirit of God, leaning and depending on Him. Realizing that we are His glorious creation and that when we live as Christ did – a human filled with the Spirit of God – that is what it means to be fully alive.

Sometime later my counselor asked me to pray about something because “I was a prayer warrior”. I wanted to scream – “No, I am not a prayer warrior! I don’t pray the same way I used to!” Again, he challenged me. “A prayer warrior is someone who prays from their heart – a little or a lot – but from the heart. Maybe you are praying from the heart more than ever.”

Another friend suggested that my journals were in fact prayer. Ah, religiousness is such a subtle enemy. Choking the life out of our spiritual being by giving us formulas or laws. My thoughts were again exposed. Yes, I had set some sort of arbitrary standard for being a prayer warrior.

So as I look at living a new way, perhaps I have a better grip on grace – or grace has a better grip on me.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I’m found. Was blind but now I see.

Seeing through the eyes of grace. Seeing others. Seeing myself. Seeing Christ.

I understand that the Chinese have an interesting way of forming the word “crisis.” It is composed of two symbols, one for danger and one for opportunity. And if crisis is the juncture between danger and opportunity, then perhaps my crisis can be an opportunity to grow and change and see more clearly through the eyes of grace.

Seeing Through the Eyes of Grace

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