God hates divorce

Dear Christian who is hurting,

“He heals the broken hearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3) “He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted.” (Isaiah 61:1)

The word heal in Hebrew  means to heal, to sew together, or mend. Imagine if you will GOD healing me piece by piece even mending together what has been torn apart. That was like salve to my weary and broken heart that my GOD would put me back together in His way in His time.

Broken hearted in Hebrew in this case means to break into pieces, crush, maime, crippled, shattered, wrecked, rupture, to be broken, rend violently. Jesus repeated this verse in Luke as part of his mission coming to this earth. To heal the broken hearted and set the captives free. I was a captive to emotional stuff. No one held me physically captive it was all spiritual bondage. I remember when I lifted my eyes after the long nights of pain and blame and realized the chains were truly gone and I was totally free. I remember feeling as if my soul had wings because once I was blind but now I see. I have sung What a Friend We have in Jesus hundreds of times just because I now KNOW he indeed is my Friend.

Bind is the Hebrew word which means to tie, bind about like a headband or turban, bind on, restrain, bandage. What comfort that you are GOD’s child and He is waiting in the wings for you to embrace the healing he will provide and has demonstrated in first sending Jesus to die for us but, also in giving us a means to have an intimate relationship with him. Not only did GOD heal but he also bandaged my wounds as they healed. How loving and how restful that is to me. I can fall into his loving arms in prayer and as the dear and precious Father I have never had, let Him do that for me.
Wound comes from the Hebrew word  which had idol as a root but also a pain or wound even a sorrow wound. I identify with making my pain and idol. I was so fearful to freely trust GOD with everything. I had spiritual white knuckles that if I let go of control it might hurt me how ironic. I remember when I first started studying the Hebrew and Greek and came across this it was all very hard to swallow. Now I love knowing what God is really saying. I am amazed at the lengths He goes to in order to have a relationship with us and take care of our needs and desires. We can truly trust him. I never trusted anyone before except myself which just about destroyed me.

Imagine him knitting you back together from brokenness of unimaginable proportions and binding that healing into a masterpiece that he knew in Psalms was fearfully and wonderfully made. That is what GOD has done for me. I sought Godly counsel through my Pastors wife because on my own I was unable to clearly see or progress. I was becoming emotionally and spiritually crippled and ineffective. I sought the Lord in His Word and on my knees, and I learned how to listen instead of act or react to everything. I began to see life’s lessons in it all and see how GOD works behind the scenes always on my behalf for His glory. It was like the scales from my eyes fell and as I began to become whole I feel full and have an overflow that I can share with others.

Hearing you say that your heart is broken, that you feel damaged, burned out, and that even talking about it makes you feel depressed is where I have traveled. It hurts but also shows us we are in touch with something still being not healed. How you might feel right now is a place I am very familiar with. It is the exact way I felt. I was emotionally and spiritually wrecked and very unable to admit it. I must say this to you hoping you will take it to heart because it is far more important that you understand what I am going to say more than you ever look at me. As I said that is not at all what this is about.
Feeling the way I did without dealing with it and without healing hindered me in every way spiritually, physically, and emotionally. I did that exact same thing by just avoiding it all. I spent hours pouring my life into futility of doing stuff that just didn’t provide anything valuable to help me grow. I have paid a very high price neglecting my relationships horizontally with people and vertically with GOD.

Not healing kept me in bondage to my pain until I decide to address it. It foreshadowed my witness and effectiveness as a light to the lost and dying world and kept me stuck going through the motions of life without really living the wonderful life Christ intended. I am speaking the truth in love. I did exactly that very thing.
Dear One, I know GOD is with me and that saying this is from grace He has given me to boldly let you know as strongly and lovingly as I can. I continued pouring my life into pseudo surface relationships which did make me laugh and provided numbness from it all but did not provide growth that will help a person heal or be restored. I wasted part of my life I can’t get back. I found many people there whose motives were not for my good or God’s glory.

Words that real friends tried to share with me along this line were dismissed when I was going through the same thing when I first was divorced and when I began to deal with my life and who I was. I was so far from healthy and whole. I would feel ungrateful to GOD if I didn’t share this with you for all that He has done for me. I am still in total awe of His grace and mercy.

I won’t continue belabor this but Dear One, but you seem to be where I was and I pray you seek out God with all your heart as well as fellowship in the Lord who will stand by you in this time, seek the LORD in His Word for what is already in place to help you heal, and cry out to GOD to find Him faithful to love you through this pain you are suffering. Above all one of the biggest mistakes I made was to try to do it in my own strength but I learned how to live in Christ as my life. That is the only way to really be healed and have lasting peace.
I am tried on every front here in Dallas with great trials but I am at peace knowing my rock, my anchor of the soul, my good Shepherd, redeemer, friend, Father, is ever with me. He is fighting for me and I can keep the great faith and peace that He provides. It’s not one bit me but in and through HIM, my all in all. I pray you continue in love as the Bible says and that you find healing in HIM. This is said from a heart that breaks for you but rejoices knowing our GOD will love you to the point your life will once again flow from His fountain if you let Him.

God bless you all who read this.

Originally posted December 8th 2011…. Reposted today because it’s still true…let’s all find someone/something greater to serve this year.

Elvis sang “I’ll have a blue Christmas” I have to admit as upbeat and strong as I am the holidays are the hardest sometimes. God is my all in all. I am totally blessed in so much yet being alone and missing my girls is tough. Being 1027 miles from those I love, and still missing my mom since her death 2009 Thanksgiving, all do challenge me this season more than ever. I’m blessed, thankful and even realize that in this valley I hit I am still a precious daughter of the most high GOD. I may not succeed in temporal things that others find so easy. I can even stink at them and fail, I am failing at something that should be easy. What do I do? I go to the Rock. I tell my LORD how I feel and HE hears me. I used to believe you had to fake it till you make it as a Christian. Success is not really a great teacher, but wow failure is a masterful molder.
To be honest faking anything in my life just at this point seems to sicken me. Bottom line is this. I am incredibly humbled to have a front row seat to GOD’s glory at the same time seeing my humanity lessen and my identity mold before Him. The more I know HIM the more He reveals to me just how much more I need to see His reflection when I look in the mirror and less of my own. Today the mirror revealed an area of my life that was being touched over and over again. It has been surrendered to GOD but still gets opened up like a deep wound. Now that might not make sense to you but don’t you think if you give GOD free reign in an area He is going to work in that area? He’s working in this area forging a deeper intimacy with me but wow the surgery is not pleasant. There is only one answer to WHY. HIS love! His love for me is the WHY that makes it bearable and even joyful. Joyful, how laughable is that? JOY in heartbreak? Ok, I know it is counter intuitive to say it but YES! Happiness is so fleeting but JOY transcends circumstances. It allows you to bring GOD into your circumstances instead of wallowing in them crying out for mercy. Your circumstances can be like mine created by a series of bad decisions that you now recognize or circumstances thrown at you that you had no control over. The goal is the same, for your good and HIS glory.
I have been here before. In times past frankly I did terrible with any challenge like this. Now I know GOD has a plan. I will trust that plan and leave the consequences to GOD. What is my challenge? Does it really matter to explain? It could be anything you are experiencing that opens up hurt and pain in your life that you have to deal with. God reveals what he wants to heal. What kind of things? Things that open up that one place you keep guarded in your life to keep you from experiencing pain like you have in the past or a place in your past you shouldn’t travel to with your focus. I wrote this to be real to let you know that Christianity is not about perfect people pleasing a perfect GOD. I am far from perfect. It is a relationship with a perfect GOD that is pleased to come along side of me as I journey in the life HE gave me. My advocate is my GOD. The relationship I have with him is the most precious gift I have ever received. To know that he understands this gal who was so thirsty for love. He understands because he said I thirst on the cross.
My heart will now as it has all my Christian life, turn to Jesus. I will tell my Father everything knowing he can take it and hopefully grow in this. I absolutely know I am loved and can rest fully in GOD’s love. So for the holidays I will praise HIM.

When I inherited this plant it was just about root bound. All of the roots were intertwined and I wasn’t sure if I could separate them. They were all so accustomed and adapted to each other that they literally were in knots. I began to separate them and heard a terrible tearing ripping sound. I wondered the whole time if I had damaged them beyond repair.  It took quite a while to get them all as individual plants. When I do things like this I seem to go to another place in my thoughts.  As I was tearing the roots apart I began thinking about my own life and how deeply my roots were established in areas of my life. By the time I was 40 my root system was well established in all of the lives and people I had journeyed with so far. It was a great ripping away to suddenly see life change overnight. Yet as I worked on separating the plants I realized a great truth I had learned. Although the plants did okay in the pot all mingled together. Each was choking off the other and the plants had grown just about as far as they could all being so compacted in one small pot. I was thinking about how small we let the world become sometimes and how complacent we get thinking there is just a small life out there and a comfortable existence. As I separated the plants and repotted each of them in a new container. It was amazing how transforming that was for them. They each became what they were supposed to in their own container and thrived in a new way better than before. I had to smile as I thought about all of the new roots my life has grown in the last 10 years and how differently it is planted now than it was before then. Not that my life is all I desire because I still have a lot of heart’s desires. The ripping away of my roots was painfully hard. The only thing I knew for a long time was pain. As I think back about those plants. Once each was separated into a new container they required different levels of care to get them back healthy again. What one needed was inappropriate for the other. That is a huge lesson I am still learning as I try to help others. 

Here’s the challenge in life when we are ripped out of our normal existence. Allow yourself to be replanted in a new life that GOD carves out for you. That’s easier said than done I know. Allow yourself to bloom again. I can’t do this without  being connected to the body of Christ and plugged into his WORD.

I love the verse in Isaiah 61:3 To appoint unto  those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified

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