My life is amazing. Within a year my despair has become hope and His words have been fulfilled in my life in the most delightful ways. A year ago my heart was a train wreck with very few survivors. Depression was ever ready to descend on me; so willing to become my soul mate. I had the phone in my hand to call the doctors on more than one occasion. My new past time of poetry writing betrayed my pain riddled soul and my thoughts about the future were sucked of colour. I felt useless against the onslaught of all the brokenness in the world.

Now as autumn fades into winter and past growth is mulch; once again I am happy. I have met the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I have a job in which I can actually be excited about the possibility of helping others. I am moving to a city (which has been on my heart for a while.) to be with the love of my life and seek a new life together with her. I might even go to Uni and expand my mind and horizons (cheesy I know). All is rosy on the outside. I am being loved in a way I never thought possible. This is opening up my heart to an illuminating, burning light and softening me in unexpected ways. This all sounds wonderful and if the healing I hope for comes it will be glorious to behold.

But there are dark parts lurking in the deep parts of me and with all this light around they cannot remain hidden. These wounds, dark balls of lies and inner vows are being brought to the surface. I am finding that it is easy to declare freedom from the past and past pain but entirely another to walk out this freedom. I find that declaring truth is a first step and in its self cuts a measure of bondage. In your walk it is that decision to stop moving in a direction that is off the path God has set before you. It however doesn’t encapsulate repentance; it is a good start but only the start. Historically I have found it hard not to get stuck in the mire of my sin and brokenness. I feel God firstly brings up these strongholds, patterns, modes of behaviour, and injured parts of our hearts so that we are aware and can seek his healing. I also believe that God loves these times. As painful and hard as it can be for us in the midst of these storms we can easily choose to run to Him and fling ourselves into his ever embracing arms. His mercy flows like a river of life water into our deep places and His love can work that bit deeper into our fractured hearts building an ever-stronger foundation to our lives. But mostly I just love that I get to be close to him and that there are no hoops or fences to jump through or scale. I really believe this to be true; any barriers are the enemy or man made in order to control and manipulate and keep me from my Father. I know I’m not saying anything new here but with the amount of lies and the frequency with which they are bandied around ever increasing. I don’t think we can here the truth too often.

Right back to task. Saying out loud I have sinned or I have this broken part in me that I want to be healed and made whole is an acknowledgement that you are not perfect. This can be surprisingly (or not so) hard and hurtful. It can unhinge the way you have been forging in the world and how you live your life. It can be really quite distressing. So the fruit of the experience so far can seem bad and rotten. Your confidence and self-esteem can take a battering and you feel like the lowest of the low. And if it stayed that way then the fruit would be bad and your life would have just been interrupted and fouled up for no good purpose.

God is a God of healing and redemption and he will never leave you hanging in limbo. Only you can leave yourself there by not engaging with Him and seeking resolution. The next step we need to take is into His healing hands. That’s it. Once you’re in there: truth and love can be imparted by Him and received by us without measure or bond. The hardness of out hearts is softened. The cold places infused with a heart heat that has to be experienced (it is unexplainable in words). The scarred, broken places healed and made whole. Grafted onto the soul that is His by right and His increasingly by your choice to believe Him and in Him.

Now I am tempted to use the onion analogy here (the peeling of layers of our heart to get to our true selves). But I wont because I feel it leaves out the fact that some things aren’t to be taken away but are to be redeemed. So I will use the picture of a tree. A deciduous tree: for example a great oak. Some branches may need pruning off for the health of the tree and some may be blown off in life’s storms. And other branches, twigs and roots may have been partially severed or be diseased. And these limbs and parts of the tree need healing and grafting back on. I feel that if a part of me is not aligned with my God as I am as His son then it must be in some way detached or diseased and rather than being cut off needs to be grafted back on and healed and allowed to receive life from the good healthy parts: the parts that are in Christ who is the author and source of life.

Now in this analogy I feel that the Father, The Holy spirit and Jesus are the soil the tree grows from and gets nutrients from, the rain and sun that provide the conditions and energy for growth and the source of the tree itself (the seed and all that was needed to bring the seed into being). If God truly loves us and we are His children do you think he would allow a good limb to be torn off without Him bring healing? Would He allow the soil around our roots to become too dry or waterlogged so that we were in peril and not be our succour? If a part of our hearts has become rotten will He not make it strong and vigorous again? And if the world has added onto our trunk or root system or burrowed into our good wood and wreaked devastation will He not drive it out?

Now why I used a deciduous tree as the example can be made more apparent. Another phenomenon I have noticed on this journey through life and the journey towards being all He meant for me to be is this: I often return to the same place in my heart or to a way of behaving after healing has taken place. And it feels clean and new like new leaves on a tree in spring. And though healing has obviously taken place I can come up against the same things, problems again and again and often need to seek more healing. I like to picture this as the leaves on the tree. After healing taking place there is a spring in our lives (and often in our steps) and new growth springs forth and all feels fresh and vigorous. But as the year goes on the world takes it’s toll on the new growth, it can be damaged and bruised. Then our world can become cold and all those leaves (the sing of fresh growth) fall to the ground below us and we can despair that we have not really grown or matured. That we are caught in a vicious circle. But that is not true; during the year in the spring and summer we have grown taller and broader. More able to weather the weather and bear more fruit. So the leaves fall and rot into the ground around us seemingly a waste, a by-product of the growth process. But in the rotting into the ground around us the nutrients that the leaves possess become nutrients the tree can use next spring when another season of growth can take place. I believe God loves process and the brokenness that may take a lifetime to be fully healed is but a breath in eternity. Nothing is wasted or for no gain if it is from Him.

Here endeth the sermon

Originally posted on http://tairngir.tumblr.com/page/35

Dec 2 2009