Take up Your Cross and Heal

For the final post of the Take up Your Cross series, God put on my heart a verse that He gave me a fresh perspective on this year. The verse is one that I suspect that many believers are familiar with, and it comes from Ecclesiastes. Solomon says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Perhaps, you think that you know exactly where this post is heading. You might have guessed the topic will center on waiting for the prince that God deems worthy of your heart. You may even want to leave this post because you have heard countless messages or read different things regarding this verse and waiting. I get it. I wondered myself why would God lead me to close this series with this verse as the focus. Well, the why is because He said to, and because it is part of my story.

If you remember in part three of this series, I made the statement, “Knowing God, He will have me share those things in future posts.” That statement was regarding what God did in and through me as He pulled me out of my valley of unbelief when it came to waiting for the prince He deemed worthy of my heart. Well, the future is now for God is leading me to share the most pivotal point that led to Him getting me out of that valley in this post.

As mentioned in the previous post, it is a process for God to remove lies that take root within us. The process of removing these particular lies began in the final quarter of 2018. By the time mid-January of this year arrived, the days where my perspective was positive was in full force. That is until one evening when the lies hit hard. I will spare you the details, but in summary, a guy that I wondered whether he had an interest in me or not turned out not to, for he began a relationship with another woman.

Finding that out triggered the lies that took hold the previous year. I reached out to my brother who is also my best friend once again. He encouraged me to figure out why I was having such a strong, negative reaction.

I took his advice and went to the one who could tell me God. Now, I must say that God can use therapists to help us see and understand why we may feel or think a certain way. He can even use the people closest to us to help us see it. He can even reveal it to us when it is just Him and us. God has used people in my life; however, on this occasion, He decided to have it be just Him and me. I cried out to God, and the Holy Spirt pointed out to me that these lies began in childhood. He then began to speak the truth to me, which I wrote down. One of the truths that He said was, “I AM HEALED.”

In the days and weeks that followed, I reread that sentence along with the others that the Holy Spirit spoke to me that particular evening. You may be asking, “Why did I reread it?” Or, “Shouldn’t the moment the Holy Spirit spoke the truth to you be the moment you were healed from those lies?” For the first question, the answer is because the Holy Spirt told me to read it and reread it. For the second question, I left that time with the Holy Spirit different, better, but healing is not always completed in an instant. What are we supposed to do in the space between? Allow me to direct your attention to Abraham and Sarah.

As I studied Abraham and Sarah’s wait story (please read Genesis chapters 12, 15-18 & 21), it grabbed my attention how from the time that God first told Abraham that he would have an heir to the fulfillment of that word was twenty-five years. Let’s pause and think about that. For instance, many twenty-five-year-old people graduated high school, graduated college (or from a trade school), have a job, and are maybe, married. Now imagine having to wait twenty-five years to get your degree or twenty-five years to get a raise at work. That would be a long time to wait.

In addition to the twenty-five years between the word God gave Abraham about his future and God’s fulfillment of that word, something else grabbed my attention. In Genesis chapters 15 and 17-18, it is interesting that God reminded Abraham about what was to come. As we see with Abraham, if we take the Bible as a whole, we will notice whilst reading God’s Word how there are repeat themes on trust, faith, patience, perseverance, waiting, etc.

Why does God repeat Himself? Whenever we are waiting, or going through trials or when God heals our hearts and minds of some things, we need to remind ourselves by reading Scripture, by repeating what the Holy Spirit says to us and by receiving the truth from the people that God uses to speak to us in our lives. The enemy would love to pull us back to where we once were or even get us to believe that we are still where we were when we are not there any longer. He would also love to get us to take matters into our own hands.

What does this all have to do with Ecclesiastes 3:1? There are times and seasons for all kinds of things. Sometimes, we may wonder why God chose a particular moment to tell us this or to do that. I wondered that about the book that I was writing, and in a similar way, part of me wondered why earlier this year was the time for God to reveal to me that the deeply rooted lies within me were there since childhood. I may not fully know the why behind now being that time to be healed from those lies instead of a year, two years, or three years ago, but, as God said through Isaiah, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).

Being a follower of Jesus is full of moments where we will not understand why now instead of before now or why not now instead of later. What we can be certain of is that if we make the choice to take up our crosses in pursuit of Him that there is a reason why the healing of our hearts and minds is a process; there is something good on the other side of that uncomfortable step; and we can believe that there is a purpose in our journey of waiting. Attached to the healing, the uncomfortable step, and the waiting is a story written only by God. The question we all have to answer for ourselves is will we take up our crosses and give Him the pen?

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All Bible verses are from Holy Bible: New International Version