Father of Lies

What in the world, I have been so slack with blogging this week! I hate not "talking" to you girls! I have just been so tired since I got back from last weekend...it has taken me a few days to get up and running again. Retreats are great, but when leading them, most off the time you feel like you need a retreat after it's over! Here is a picture of Laura, Katie and I, my two best girls that I sang and taught Bible study with. LOVE THEM.



And I started me new job yesterday!!!!! Ok, I know that most of you reading have children, as I hope to one day, but I must say, my nannying child is THE CUTEST little boy I have EVER seen in my life. And that includes one of my best friends who has 3 children that I couldn't love more if they were my own. But this little one definitely takes the cake on that one. OH MY GOODNESS!!! I could just cry thinking about him because I miss him already!! I'll try to put up some pictures soon...once I get my act together and buy some batteries for my camera...

I'm leaving in the morning for another retreat that I got asked to help with last minute, and because my nanny-boss doesn't need me for a few days I graciously said yes! Another opportunity to pour out to young girls...I would be silly to pass that up!! So I will be gone for another few days, and not sure I'll have access to the internet til I get back. (Your prayers would be appreciated...I was just informed that I'll be teaching middle school this time. Nuff said.)

But for now, I wanted to share something that stuck out to me from one of our Bible study days last week. I mean, a lot of stuff sticks out to me, but because of my past struggles, this one in particular hit home.
For 10 years I struggled with self esteem issues. I am only 22, so as you can imagine this started at a pretty early age...around 12 (about the time middle school hit, DUH.) I won't get into all of the issues I had (I think I wrote about them back when I first started the blog if you're interested...in the first couple of entries) but long story short, the devil got a hold of my mind and very quickly began manipulating my every thought through his filter of false information and lies of darkness.
So much of this Bible study has helped me with the bondage that I was freed from. What I'm finding is that yes, I most definitely was delivered from all of that stuff January 1, 2007, (Praise the Lord! I don't ever want to forget that day!). But I'm still very much in a healing process from it. I let Satan have TOO MUCH and the Lord is slowly filling in the cracks...every time I get to share my story with a girl or group of girls (like last weekend), a little part of that past is redeemed (oh I could just cry right now) and made into something beautiful, and the Lord is doing the very same thing through this study. Every time something strikes at the core of how those days affected me, I stand a little taller and stronger, with another weapon and snippet of truth to replace all those lies I once believed. One of the scriptures on the last day of last week really stuck out to me.

(Just before this, Jesus is talking to 'the Jews who had believed Him' and said to them "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." v31-32 and that if they really were children of God like they proclaimed, then they would love Him [Jesus] instead of trying to kill Him.)
John 8:43-44 "Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murdered from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for his is a liar and the father of lies."

That in itself was awesome just to punch Satan in the face by being reminded and saying OUT LOUD that there is NO truth in him. That he IS a LIAR and the FATHER OF LIES. But the thing that got me good was the next verse.

v45 "Yet because I [Jesus] tell the truth, you do not believe me!"

Oh, how MESSED UP I was!!!!Because that was me!!! I remember days and days of reading the Bible knowing how God's love and those words applied to other people, but wondering where I fit in, because I was letting my heart and soul bow down to a crock and a phony. I was so turned around that exactly as this verse says, when I heard, saw, read, or spoke the truth of God I didn't believe it for myself. As (embarrassing is not the word...) but foolish as I felt when I realized that was me, HOW MUCH MORE glory I can give him now from bringing me out of such a dark world. There was a quote from one of Kelly's missionary friend's in china and it ended with this...

"...a healed relationship or person can reflect more glory than one who never knew brokenness."

Not that God wants us to go through mess, but we do...and when He allows us to get so far that we realize He was the ONLY ONE who could have pulled us out, how much MORE glory He receives, which is the whole point of everything!! It makes me sick to my stomach to think about where I've been mentally and with the way I treated myself physical speaking, but every day I choose to proclaim freedom in Christ from all of that, and make it known that He is the KING of my heart, every bit of that pain and junk is redeemed in His name.

I'm sure you and I have had very different stories in the last few years, and I can't help but think how much beautiful and stronger our relationships with the Lord are because of the MESS He allowed us to endure. Most of my 10 year struggle was completely hidden and an internal battle...a secret world I wouldn't have dared shared with anyone then. They were some of the darkest days I can remember. And I can only imagine some of the things some of you have dealt with that some of us will never know. But what peace and joy we can have at the thought that because we experienced brokenness in different ways, and allowed God to be the one to do the restoring, we know TRUTH and the author of it in ways we would have never imagined (or probably asked for if we knew what it would take us through).

God is so good. SO GOOD. And I have never been more in love with Him than I am right now. Stephanie (Ocean Mommy) wrote about something on her blog the other day that I just loved. (Check it out if you have a sec) But she was talking about how she was glad that she didn't love her husband as much as she did the day she married him. She loves him so much more now. Isn't that the way we should be with the Lord?! Yes the love that we feel for Him when we initially come to know Him is like nothing we've ever experienced. But think if it stayed there. I wouldn't want to go back to the days of those 10 years if you paid me all the money in the world. But I also wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. My prince of peace and the author of my salvation saved my scrawny (well, no it's not so scrawny...hahaha) butt from the meanest enemy you and I will ever know, and delivered me into the greatest love relationship of my life.

And by-george I'll be danged if the devil ever gets a piece of my heart again.