This spiritual awakening God is blessing me with has been a long time coming. I was spiritually dead for a while, but then the Holy Spirit, in spite of me, started stirring in my soul. I don’t know why, but boy am I glad. The stirring is what lead us to a different church, but then it felt like I was always on the brink of something big, but I could never quite breakthrough the barriers I was putting up. Finally, at our church’s womens’ retreat last April, I sat crying and praying out to God to help me, to show me how to breakthrough and I know I finally am. It has taken almost all of this last year, and I am still learning daily, but I am hearing the Spirit and knowing God and relying on Him in so many ways. I feel like that is a lot of what I am writing about lately because He is finally starting to fully be part of all of my life, not just the areas I let Him in the past.
Ironically, the women’s retreat this year starts on the day of the dreaded exam, but I plan to head out the next morning to meet God. However, I don’t have to wait until then to meet Him. I just did a little bit ago because I was down and I needed Him.
It is funny, but I seem to have decided to start tackling my fears, my addictions, my barriers all at the same time, but maybe that is because I finally asked the Spirit to come into all of me, therefore into all of my struggles. I am reading this book called Made to Crave Lysa Terkeurst, and it is mainly about food, but it is really applying to all areas of my life. One of the the parts I read today talked about food being more important to myself than God – that I am relying on food more than God, and I that I have to see that to stop it. That struck me today, and it also made me realize that I am relying on a lot of other things before God. WHOA – red flag!!!!
What am I relying on: food, clothing, friends, and my own abilities. I rely on food and clothing (shopping) to make me feel better when I am down, to reward me when I do well, and to make me happy. I have had such sadness and longing for amazing friends to make me not feel lonely (and while that is nice and He is actually giving me so many amazing relationships lately) God is really the only one I should RELY on for relationship. Lastly, I used to tell myself that as long as I was accepted to sit for the PE exam, I could study hard enough to pass, no problem. Well, now that I am less than four weeks from the test and have been studying since the end of January, I realize that I am not enough to pass this exam. My strength has to come from the Lord.
I am going through a study of Galatians right now with some dear women that I am loving more and more each time I am around them, and today when I felt down with the studying, I turned to my weekly activity to get in the Word and near the Holy Spirit. Part of the intro I read was about someone hanging off a cliff yelling for help, and a voice from above said, “let go, I’ll help you.” The person didn’t want to let go, and the voice said, “I will catch you, trust me, but you have to let go.” I knew that was the Spirit speaking to little old me. I was feeling so low about the PE exam and so helpless, and He answered, “let go and I will help you.”
Now, I’ll be honest, I am not entirely sure what letting go looks like in this situation, so that was/is my current question with the Lord, but I know He will answer and show me. I know I have to let go and quit trying to do all of these things on my own, and He will catch me and hold me up and redeem me – He already has so many times before.
I just wanted to share that today. I hope you all know that if you need help, He will be there, just let go.
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