Here, Not in my Past (Lesson 6 of I Am…So You Don’t Have to Be)

This week’s questions:

1. How current is your God? Is he up to date on all your issues or do you have old hurts you still hold behind your back?

2. Has the enemy ever told you there are situations that are ‘old news’ that are better left stuffed down? Or perhaps because they were so long ago they can’t possibly be affecting you now?

3. In the matter of established authority, does God truly reign in your life? Where are you when He calls your name?

4. Do you ever feel God has forgotten you in your ‘west side of the wilderness’?

5. Have you ever experienced a time of cleansing where God has illuminated and rejuvenated you? If not, do you find you are in need of this now?

The first two questions struck me the most.   Though I don’t recollect an issue that is now holding me back (though I have several that make me step slower than I should), I do have situations in my life that I’ve had to release in order to “lighten my load.”   I love the picture posted above of my oldest, even though I’ve assured my son that I will change it in August to a shot of him (smile).   It was taken last fall while we visited the Renaissance Festival north of here.   My daughter dislikes the picture, saying that it makes her look like a little girl.  Indeed, in the few months that have passed, she has blossomed into a full grown young lady, hair flowing, gorgeous smile, and curves that had the heads of college freshmen turning when we recently toured the AU Center.   This is scary for me as I remember my own days of transforming into a young lady.   As a 13-year-old with a 20-year-old’s body, I was eyed to the point of harassment—not only by boys near my age, but by men old enough to know better.   Funny thing, I never remembered these incidents in my young adulthood.   I’ve heard and seen enough testimonies of women who are stuck in horrid memories to accept that this was God’s way of moving me to a new place.  I’m not condemning them as they will share their testimonies to help others overcome Satan, but I will sing of a God who shielded me from myself, and from a hurt that might have been debilitating.

 How are these memories affecting me now?   In my studies on forgiveness, I’ve concluded that, in our humanness, forgiveness is a process—we hate, we hurt, and then we heal.   By the time I began to remember these instances, I had reached a point of healing, but also a place of wariness and protectiveness over my daughter.  I don’t have revelation about why any of this happened, except that I can impart to her to pray about her steps and to guard herself appropriately, even from people in the church.  Prayerfully her testimony will be far more boring than mine.

I am here, not in my past, when God calls me.   Many of the people whom the devil used to destroy me in this way are dead—some died slow, painful deaths.   Others are still alive, and some I have met again as adults.   They’re not prospering.  I’m not “hating,” as the kids say, on them; it’s simply to point out, if only for me, that Jesus and I got the victory!   Why let someone who doesn’t walk in my anointing keep me from getting all that God has in store for me?   As I said earlier, there are issues that slow me down.   Voices of others who’ve hurt me in a different way over the years, over-emphasizing all of my inadequacies, still haunt me.   Who said that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?   But my confession is that those voices, that hurt, will not keep me stuck.   There is too much work to be done in and through me to live in my past.   The title of this series preaches all by itself: HE IS…so I don’t have to be.   God bless you today.