Written by: Ashley
Many of us wonder why we do not feel God’s love and we question whether or not he truly accepts us, but we ask that question while we have our hearts so tightly closed off that even the Jaws of Life could not pry it open. God gives us a choice, he does not force us to give us his heart. He is not going to forcefully pry it open but instead he waits for us to freely give it. If we are asking ourselves why there are things in our life thatstill cause us great pain, sadness and disappointment than we also need to ask ourselves what areas of our lives are we not giving up to Him.
We often hold unto the pain in our life because it is familiar to us, and sometimes it is all we have know, so even though pain has a negative effect on us it can still be difficult to give it up simply because it is familiar and it becomes an unhealthy comfort to us. With that being said, giving something up, whether is it good or bad, is scary because it is going into the unknown and we are leaving our comfort zone and everything that is familiar to us might change.
Going into the unknown is when your mind has the opportunity to get filled with thoughts and for most of us the unknown brings thoughts that cause us to worry, have anxiety and automatically think of all the negative outcomes.
That does not have to be the case though, although it may be human nature to respond that way we do not have to be overcome by the negative reactions of our human nature because God is far above our human nature. He is also above the stress, anxiety, fear, worry, hurt and pain that we experience in our lives as an initial reaction to our circumstances.
When we enter the unknown, and our thoughts start to run like crazy, that is when we should be making an effort to fill our mind with thoughts of Him and let his peace into our minds while also trying to block out and overcome the negative thoughts that our human nature sometimes allows into our hearts.
Our default setting is to worry, but we have to manually go in and change our default settings and God can override all of our negative default settings if we let Him.
God wants to give us the opportunity to not only give him our hearts, so that he can heal them, but he also wants us to give him our pain, worries, disappointments, failures, bitterness, addictions and insecurities.
Those are all things that many people become familiar with in some way or another and they become our comfort zones as well. God wants us to leave those comfort zones so that he can bring us into new and better things. He can’t give us something new and better until we get rid of the old things that are holding us back and taking up time and space in our lives.
The more we give over to Him the more He can fill us up with good things. He trades our pain for His restoration, our worry for His peace, our disappointments for His joy, our failures become the first step to new opportunities with Him, our bitterness gets replaces with His forgiveness, addictions fade away as He becomes our main focus, and insecurities dissolve in His unconditional love.
God’s unconditional love is not something that is easy for us to understand and it is sometimes hard to believe that it even exists because it is not something we usually see in our everyday lives or in the people around us, but why are we looking around us for evidence of it rather than looking to God himself? We may see a small glimpse of unconditional love in the people around us, and we should receive that as well, but we should always keep our eyes on the main source and that is God himself.
Many people spend more time trying to disprove God’s unconditional love and its existence rather than actually trying to find it so that they can receive it but if they put the same amount of energy into searching for God’s love rather than trying to disprove it than the results they would find would change their life.
For myself I started to doubt Gods love, but then I realized I was looking in all the wrong places for it and even when I did want it I still wasn’t totally looking in the right place because I was looking to other people rather than directly to Him. Other people can love us too, very much, but no one can unconditionally love like God can and does. God’s love is not something we are meant to understand he just wants us to receive it by faith.
We often think God is mad at us, but anger is usually a response to something that surprises us and catches us off guard, we get mad when something happens that we were not expecting, but God already knows every mistake and every bad choice that we are going to make, so we are never going to surprise him or catch him off guard, so why would be he be made at us?
When Jesus told the parable about the prodigal son that was a perfect example of unconditional love and we should always remember that no matter how many times we mess up he is not mad at us or waiting for an opportunity to punish us he just wants us to come back to Him.
Through repentance we are forgiven and made whole, forgiveness is not something we earn it is also a gift that we receive by faith. Every time we genuinely repent and turn to Him, He is right there waiting. God never turns a cold shoulder.
In life we will experience trials and things will not always go perfect but that is not a sign that God is mad at us. Some of our choices have natural consequences and sometimes we just face difficult situations because there are many things and situations that are out of our control but in whatever situation we are in there is always God’s peace. John 16:33 says “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart!
I have overcome the world.”
To me that verse means that whatever situation we are in, and we will face difficult situations from time to time, ifwe can simply find God than He will guide us through it because he has already overcome the world so what obstacle is too big for Him?
I think of the circumstances of our life being like the waves that wash up from the ocean onto the shore, sometimes the waves are strong and if we lay down in the water on the sand and just let the water run over our face than we will feel like we are drowning, but if we stand up and make an effort to plant our feet strong than the same waves that were drowning us before will feel like just a little bit of resistance at our feet.
We have to make a choice to stand up in order to overcome our circumstances.
Learning to trust God can sometimes be just as hard as learning to trust other people. For some of us that is particularly difficult especially if we have faced disappointment as a result of the actions of others. Not being able to trust is a habit that is formed to protect ourselves, or at least we think we are protecting ourselves, but if we don’t trust God I can guarantee that is not actually a way of us protecting ourselves at all, and we are depriving ourselves from the greatest love we could ever know.
People may hurt us and let us down from time to time but God will never leave or forsake us, although we may sometimes turn our back on him,
He will never turn His on us.
To me this verse says it all Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” That verse is why we should chose to trust Him. If we can learn to trust God we can learn to trust the people around us as well and if we build a strong foundation on God than when people around us let us down we will not be as shaken and disappointed.
When we give God our circumstances he turns them around and uses them for good. Even for a broken child that has been sexually abused there is total restoration in God’s hands and although the effect that it initially has on the child is negative God replaces all the negativity, hurt, bitterness and anger with his restoration and peace. When we give it to God he can use it for good. For whatever situation it may be He replaces our pain and our hurt with compassion and understanding for others so that we can reach out to the unreachable.
Although God does not want us to experience bad things He does want us to give those bad things over to Him, rather than holding onto it as baggage, so that He can heal us and use it for good. Romans 8: 28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
God desires to heal our hearts.
In 1987 Dr. Zbigniew Religa performed a 23 hour long heart transplant surgery and at the end of the surgery a picture was taken that captured the exhausted face of the doctor and his assistant sleeping in the corner. When I heard this story it gave me revelation.
If a man is willing to go to that extent to save another man’s life that he possibly did not even personally know, than how much more is God willing to do to heal the hearts of His children?
So allow God to take your heart aches and turn them into something beautiful. We can’t let the negative circumstances of our life define who we think we are or how we see ourselves.
A beautiful diamond ring that has been dropped it in the mud is still a beautiful diamond ring, it does not lose its value,it just simply needs to be cleaned off.
Let God heal your heart, receive his love and put your circumstances into his hands and then wait and see what He will do in your life.
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