The way God works

This is a little story about the way God works. One year ago, I mostly stopped blogging in favor of private journaling. I was emotionally unhealthy. I had just moved into my new home and had experienced a deep high from moving. But all of my emotional baggage and hurts moved into the expanse of my new home. Having moved at the beginning of June, by July the high was gone. Tempers flared, and I felt unfulfilled. Truth is I was in a very bad place.

When my babies were little and toddling around, mothering was hard, but it was also joyful. I longed for the joy I had when they were little. This new season of motherhood I had entered was more than hard. I wrote in my journal that I wanted to experience joy from my head to my toes. It had been so long since I’d felt happy. Those words were a cry of prayer.

But then God. {The best three words.}

July to December crashed like waves, some highs, some lows. Midlife is a deeply troubling season for some and was for me at the time. I wondered if I was done. I felt disillusioned with motherhood, marriage, unfulfilled dreams, and my self. Everything was a struggle.

I was one of a very small number of folks who got a ticket to LIT, and that gave me some hope when hope felt small and dull. I completed Entrusted as part of the entrance requirements. God met me in His Word. Although I’d been getting in the Word, my quiet times were lifeless and dull until Entrusted.

God moved throughout my low time, but in December, I began to see Him move in me.

I had confided in a friend a struggle, which she too had. Later, she reached out to me and asked that we study the Word together to find His answer for our struggle and that I write it for others to journey along. I agreed though the writing of the struggle seemed an impossibility. That was January.

By February, I attended LIT. In March, I flew overseas, a step to fulfilling callings and dreams. LIT helped strengthen the call to the flight overseas, as well as set a course of deep burning to write. In all this, God was moving me deeply in His Word. I began Scripture memory again. My friend and I’d come across a new study guide that we felt led to study. It was long and winding, and I felt it would take a year to complete. I would often stop in areas instead of moving forward in order to really grasp the largeness of what the study wanted to root in me.

As I studied, I still felt a large portion of defeat of the areas I mentioned above: motherhood, marriage, self. The study challenged me saying that defeat was not a Christian response, and it took me to Romans 8 to defend itself. By that time, I had memorized many passages, and I sensed deep renewal in me, but I was on the edge of something more.

I began to think about being “more than a conqueror.”

More than a conqueror > more than hard

I realized that I was baking in myself and feeding my soul negative, deadly self talk. When I read about Romans 8, it is considered the gem of the Bible. This gem had the ability to change, and change was exactly what I wanted. I wanted to walk in victory, not in sin, in joy, not in defeat. I began writing a bible study about it. First, I researched through more study and more deep thinking about the concepts I was studying.

It seemed some felt Romans 8 was too lofty for me, but I didn’t care. I pressed on, and when I did, I found the elusive joy I’d hungered for.

A fb friend recently asked her followers two questions: 1. If you could ask God for one thing what would it be? and 2. If God answered it, how would your life change?

Last year, my one thing was joy. He changed my life completely, though almost none of my circumstances changed and I have to keep doing the things I learned to do and that I teach in the study I wrote and am teaching.

When she asked, I responded with friendship to #1, and to #2 I said, “I like to think I would flourish more, but I don’t know. It could be the opposite. His gifts given or withheld are perfect. He can teach me through both.” His gifts given or withheld are perfect. It is only God that I could say this.

This weekend I opened up my journal which I hadn’t written in for some time and started a new entry detailing all God had been doing in me. I opened it to the front. One year to the day I asked for joy from head to toe. True joy comes from God. Yesterday, the sermon was about this one thing. I smiled and nodded. This is the way God works.

I’ve written this study for the Christian woman regularly walking in defeat to experience true freedom and victory. I will offer it here soon. Subscribers will be able to download it for free for a short time, so if this interests you or you know someone who could benefit from this, please let them know!