The Great Divorce, Pt 2

This is a song by Jimmy Needham that changed my perspective on idolatry. Take some time out of your day, get in a space where you can really listen to the Holy Spirit and listen to this song. Allow the Holy Spirit to search your heart. Crush the idols. They will suck you dry and leave you with nothing.

Be set free.

Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting. Psalm 139:23, 24

The Great Divorce

So, I've been going through this divorce, right.
But I didn't realize it until today
That this whole season God set out
To divorce my idols from me

My whole life when I would go through something I would escape into my own little world. I would run to my idols. Whether that be a fantasy world, a best friend, a man, sometimes even the house of God itself. I've made a life out of running to everything and everyone except the Lord. We've all done it. We all have our idols. 

It all started in the Garden of Eden. See, you thought I'd say with the Israelites, but nope. We began to worship something other than God long before the golden calf. Idol worship is about more than statues and Buddha. An idol is ANYTHING you love more than God, go to more than God, prefer over God. An idol is anything or anyone you worship that is not Jesus Christ. But to understand that we must first understand what worship is.

Worship is not just about singing songs and lifting your hands and bowing to something. When you worship something you arrange your life around it, it becomes your priority above all else. Worship is an intense adoration of something or someone. 

How do you identify if something is an idol? Usually the first sign that you've made something or someone an idol is denial. Lol. Whatever you idolize above Jesus, it's not going to be easy to admit it. ESPECIALLY if you're a Christian. I know it was hard for me to recognize that I was running to anything but Jesus. That I loved myself more than I loved Him. That I even loved and trusted His people more than I loved and trusted Him. 

This is what Jimmy says: Anything I want with all my heart is an idol. Anything I put before my God is an idol. Anything I can't stop thinking of is an idol. ANYTHING I give all my love is an idol.

What do you schedule your days around? What makes you a tad bit angry when the preacher speaks against it? What do you spend your time thinking about? When you zone out thinking what is circling in your brain? Are you thinking about the Maker of Heaven and earth? Or your boyfriend?

This is not to say that thinking about other things than God is a sin. This is to get you to look at what you may idolize.

I have had a ROUGH time since September of last year. And it just dawned on me this morning that I've had a rough time because I'm going through a divorce! God has had to take me through this mire to divorce me from all of my own devices. He says no more. No more will I lean on my own understanding, because I don't understand anything! I DON'T KNOW NOTHING! But He knows it all. And He longs to share His heart with me. I have learned that nothing I conjure up is going to work. Nothing I try to do or say or maneuver is going to get me the money I need, the car I need, the man I need. Nothing. 

We MUST learn to not lean on our own understanding! Then and only then will our paths be made straight. That's in the Bible.

I beg of you, for your own sake, GET DIVORCED! Leave those idols in the dust where they came from and give ALL of your worship to the one true God who NEVER fails.

⁵ “With whom will you compare me or count me equal?
    To whom will you liken me that we may be compared?
⁶ Some pour out gold from their bags
    and weigh out silver on the scales;
they hire a goldsmith to make it into a god,
    and they bow down and worship it.
⁷ They lift it to their shoulders and carry it;
    they set it up in its place, and there it stands.
    From that spot IT CANNOT MOVE.
Even though someone cries out to it, IT CANNOT ANSWER;
    IT CANNOT SAVE THEM FROM THEIR TROUBLES Isaiah 46:5-7

Recovering Sex Addict

I was exposed to sex at a very early age and began to have an active fantasy life around the third grade. I reasoned from an early age that if boys didn't like me, then I would just pretend that they did. And if boys didn't want me  then I could slip into a fantasy world where they desired me. So that's what I did faithfully for twelve years and what I still fight against this very day.

I had a secret life. As soon as I was out of sight, or sometimes just out of hearing range, I would drift into my fantasy world. They ranged from imagining I had someone to cuddle with to erotic fantasies and masturbation, thought those shackles didn't come until I was around 15. First introduced to the idea by an older neighbor girl, I was chained to a world that I could control. When I hated myself, I could be someone else. When I wanted someone, they could become mine all in a world of make believe. Like an x-rated game of imaginary friends. I was addicted. I was dependent upon it. It was my life.

When I started to walk with God seriously and consistently, I just got saved in m fantasy world too. Instead of random people, I would fantasize about my future husband. It wasn't until then that I saw how erotic fantasies began to tear me away from God. I tried to stop. And often times I was too busy to fantasize once I began doing ministry, but I just couldn't shake free. It was a demonic stronghold. What finally set me free in 2010 was my confession to my two best friends. It was hard. It sucked. But I knew I was free for the first time in over a decade, which was well over half my life at the age of twenty.

Once I went back to school, I was too busy to even know if my life had really changed. I was free and managed to keep myself out of compromising situations. Time went on and I struggled mostly when I would visit home. I fell a lot. I knew I was free, but my mind had not changed. I had the power to say no, but didn't have the mind to. I didn't trust God with my life. I still wanted control. And the only place I could have control was there. So that's where I went. It became my escape. I would run there when things were bad. What I had been set free from I let back in.

As time went on I would dabble in it, but I did what I could to stay pure for the most part. I didn't have a lot of alone time anymore, so that helped. I went to another school for a semester, then back to the university I was originally at. This was the roughest season I'd had concerning my issues with sexual purity. Lust was running rapid on this campus and I was overtaken as an unsuspecting victim. I was swallowed whole by my fleshly desires like I had not been since before Christ. I was a hypocrite. While in real life I was discipling women and leading an intercessory prayer meeting every week, I was being defeated every single night in my bedroom. It was an awful and draining double life. 

I would have victorious weeks. And during one of my times of victory I attended an anonymous group for women who struggled with sexual sin. Being that it was during my high time, I was kind of a damper on the party. I was the one who kept saying, "But Jesus can free you!" Which is what these women knew and what I knew. The meeting was interesting, we studied scriptures, talked about our struggles, and confessed our wrongs. But the other women were in the midst of their sin whereas I was walking in freedom at the time. 

I took home the study guide as a gift and once I was home I began to peddle through it. I felt this identity creep up on me as I searched for the root of my issue so that it wouldn't come back. Instead of focusing on God, I began to focus on my sin. Upon taking a couple of questionnaires I discovered I was a sex addict. And this is how I began to identify myself. This became who I was. I was no longer a child of Christ, but an addict who would never be healed, only recovering. 

When I began to identify myself by my sin, I saw no light at the end of the tunnel and fighting was useless. For a couple of weeks I couldn't see past the darkness of who I thought I really was. Until God broke through and said this is not who you are. You are free, new, clean and pure. Not until I allowed God to reveal to me my true identity could I truly learn to say no to sexual sin.

All of that to say, WE MUST NO LONGER REGARD PEOPLE AS IN THE FLESH! We must begin to see people as Christ sees them. When Jesus healed the sick and lame he had vision of who they really were and could therefore restore them to that. If we continue to play along with the enemy who has made the sin of this generation the core of who they are we will never see freedom. Freedom is about what Christ set us free to, not what He set us free from. If we focus on what we need to be free from we will only sink deeper. 

ONCE WE KNOW WHO WE ARE IN CHRIST A LIFESTYLE OF SIN WILL BE UNACCEPTABLE TO US.

I have never seen anyone, including myself, get set free by focusing on not sinning. But I have seen many become free and begin to walk in freedom and victory by regarding themselves the way Christ does. When I am tempted I remember that is not who I am and I trust God with my life. No, I am not a 'recovering' sex addict. I am a child of the living God who is PURE. Yes, sex addiction is something I have to say no to everyday, but that does NOT define me NOR identify me. I am PURE. And when I stand on the truth of God's word it tells me I am free because the Son has set me free.

So whatever you are struggling with, I plead with you to focus on the cross. Know who you are in Christ and saying no will become easier and easier.

Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer. Therefore if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 2 Corinthians 5:16, 17

So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. John 8:36

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. Romans 6:11-13

Set Free: Rejection

I've been rejected a lot in life. As I've said in previous posts, I was hurt a lot in the area of rejection growing up. I was always throwing myself at some boy and getting rejected. Or chasing some friendship and getting turned away and left out. From the 6th grade to the 11th grade, I never had any real consistent friends. All my friends from elementary who weren't rejected by the boys in school were wrapped up in relationships, started having sex and the like. While I was alone. Starving for attention and identity after my dad left. I so wanted just a friend. Who loved me more than themselves. Sure, I had people, but I was always alone on the band bus while everyone else was coupled up. I remember sitting alone at the back and seeing someone make out who I didn't even know was a couple and not having anyone to tell the news to. It was heartbreaking.

Every boy that I had liked since the age of three didn't like me back. Maybe one, when I was in the first grade, but that was it. And I couldn't understand why.. I was 15 and I just couldn't understand what was so wrong with me that no one even wanted to give me a chance. It wasn't that I dated and got dumped over and over. I mean they wouldn't even give me a chance to love them. So much worse than experiencing my love then rejecting it. It was like I wasn't even worth the experience. I wasn't worth being given a chance.

To this day, I still don't understand it. How can you reject someone you don't even know?

Then I remembered, Jesus was rejected. By people who didn't even know Him. And He still is.

When I came to Christ I left most of my past where it was, in the past. That was the old me. I'm made new and nothing in my past matters.

I had even come to believe that all the rejection I experienced was God's will to protect me from potientially detrimental relationships that would destroy my purity that God wanted to preserve.

So naturally, I never was healed from the rejection and never thought I needed to be. I thought it was just wiped away. Until I began to notice it was blurring my vision. I was so terrified that my future husband wouldn't really want me. That he would just have to be with me because God said so. Then I was convinced he would never come for me. I was so crippled by rejection that I stayed in a way to close friendship with a guy friend hoping that God would open his eyes to me as a wife knowing he wasn't God's best for me. I KNEW IT. But I was convinced he was the best I could get. And I couldn't even confront him about the nature of our friendship because fear of rejection crippled me. Every step I took was out of fear and not faith. I lurked, waiting for the inevitable rejection. But the Holy Spirit would not allow it to be my verdict. Not until I was set free was I able to cut off that relationship.

Some of you are in the same situation I was in. Until you are set free you will continue to stay in relationships and friendships that you shouldn't be in out of fear and not out of faith.

AND WITHOUT FAITH IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE GOD.

AND ANYTHING THAT IS NOT FROM FAITH IS SIN.

I didn't have faith that this guy was my future husband. None. I had FEAR that if it wasn't him, it couldn't be anyone else. I DIDN'T EVEN LIKE HIM. I couldn't name five things that I liked about him in that way. He was NOTHING I wanted in a husband. An amazing friend and brother he was and still is to me, but other than that. Nothing. But I was willing to settle out of fear.

One night our youth pastor preached at our college meeting that I regularly attend and serve in. He preached on relationships. The best sermon on relationships I've heard in a long while. Rocked us all. And he talked about rejection and purity briefly, but not too long. I knew I needed to draw lines with this guy and God told me I could talk to him as long as it was out of faith and not out of fear. After the sermon I knew I needed prayer over the rejection I was fearing.

He explained to me that those wounds were on my spirit and God wanted to heal them. And we prayed and I was set free instantly. The demons that harassed me constantly, consistently, fled at the name of Jesus. They no longer whispered lies about myself worth in my ear. I was free. And three days later God freed me from that friendship and I barely cried a tear! The heartbreak that I so anxiously awaited and tried to avoid, didn't really hurt that bad.

I knew what I was worth the whole time. I was just convinced that no one else did and they needed to see that. Once I was set free I could actually see with the eyes of Christ how many people, brothers and sisters, knew what I was worth the whole time! I was just blind to it.

God is so faithful and so perfect. And He desires for us all to live in freedom just like Eden. So I pray that God shows you what you're worth to Him. And I pray that you will move in faith and declare freedom over rejection. Go to the one who was rejected more than all of us. He knows your pain. And He knows how to heal you.