Testimonial

I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly what I was getting into when I started this journey. I thought it seemed like a great idea to dedicate 40 days of seeking God consistently in order to hear his heart for me and to get rid of residual junk from my past. I’ve been a Christian for a long time and have grown tremendously over the years. Little did I know what God had in store. This journey took me to places within, that I didn’t even know I needed. The words on the page are anointed and his heart overflowed directly into mine. Each day that I encountered His presence through the exercises of freedom, visualizing, worshiping and soaking, I was taken to a genuine place of freedom. During the “Sit and Soak It In” pages, God began to gift me with short poetic words that brought hope and healing. It had been 18 years since my last poem and only God could know the perfect path to my heart. The best way to describe my experiences are found in Numbers 21:17 and the words of a Jesus Culture song called In The River…It sprang up a well in me. This journey is a MUST! You will be forever changed.

My 40 day challenge was to do the following three things: 1. Do not engage protective strategies to keep my heart safe. 2. Trust God’s goodness & his desire to provide me with every need. 3. Forgive. All the people.   The idea of not engaging in my protective strategies literally brought me to tears. I may have a teensy issue with this happening in every. single. relationship in my life. Number 2. Trust in God’s goodness & his desire to provide me with my every need? I love Jesus. But that doesn’t make me perfect or mean I have everything in life all tidy on a shelf.  Finally, 3 -I would love to say this was an easy one. My pride wants me to say I have no problems forgiving others. Often, that is entirely true. The unforgiveness I had was towards the people in my life that did not hold up their end of the relationships, causing most of the other items on that list way up above. There are some seriously deep wounds from some seriously important people.  When I got to day 32, I felt different! The difference was this: I found joy. Earlier that week when I met with Josie, she said “maybe your forgiveness issue lies within yourself. Maybe it’s not all about others.” Uhmmm…yuck. Who asked for that? She sent me home to create a list of all the things I needed to forgive myself for. The funny thing was, one morning after I finished my list, I was praying & heard the words, “Grace upon Grace.” Ok. Grace upon grace. “For out of His fullness [the superabundance of His grace and truth] we have all received grace upon grace [spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing, favor upon favor, and gift heaped upon gift]” (John 1:16, AMP). Grace means the free & unmerited favor of God. Once I was able to grant myself just a little grace for being human, normal, flawed, I began to feel free & found I was not such a train wreck. I’m just a silly, little Jesus freak trying to make her way in a world filled with people just like me.