Most of my life I have been taught that the mind is a bad thing and that it is a hindrance for the Spirit. That was until I learned that the mind is the gateway to Heaven. To think of all the times that I have tried to push my mind completely to the side so that I could live by the spirit, I could have been using my mind for that very thing.
These past few months have been rough. My mind has been like a warzone, no exaggeration. Growing up, I was taught that you had to fear God and be an obedient Christian. Even though I know now that there is much more to it, I can still be tough on myself. It's odd that I have a lot of patience with other people but I can really be hard on myself. I have always had this attitude towards myself that slip-ups have no excuses. I will admit right now that even though I am a Christian, I have still had moments when I questioned wether I will make it to Heaven or not. I am not saying that I thought I was a bad person, but, with everything that God has shown me and taught me, I felt like there was this higher standard that I had to keep reaching for. I didn't believe in getting "comfortable," because I thought of that word as my sure ticket to Hell. But, now things are changing in my life. God has been teaching me to show mercy to myself. It was always easy to show everyone else mercy, but never for a moment, myself. That is why I went through a time of depression when I was in High School. I didn't feel good enough. But, you have to understand that that was what I was taught my entire life. I never knew God loved me. It boggles my mind now to think that even though I didn't know he loved me, I still wanted to please him. My relationship with God didn't go beyond Creator and creation until a few years ago when for the first time I heard him say "I love you, Nickie." For three hours I stood at the altar and cried. My whole life I had lived in fear. I was afraid of everything. I was terrified of God. But as I stood there, I could physically and spiritually feel him stripping everything away. My "reality" was no longer real. Everthing I had known and believed fell away. All of the passages of scripture I had memorized growing up in Christian schools finally had meaning to them and they were no longer just words I chose to recite when needed. I fell in love that day. No one will ever measure up to my Lord. He taught me to smile again. He taught me to dance by dancing with me. He taught me to trust and to love. He taught me everything that I know now. He showed me that I DO have value. He showed me that I did not have to please. Now, I cannot stop smiling. He is always there with me. He speaks and I listen. I never make a decision without him. People are all the time asking me what God is speaking to me and I always tell them that He is constantly speaking and he truly is, I am not exaggerating. I will be in the middle of a conversation with someone and He will say something about them. He won't let me put myself down. Whenever I try to, I end up exausted and crying, because I try to fight against him and I end up realizing how foolish that is. I can remember once when I was hurting and I just wanted to give up. He came and put his hand on me and prayed into me. I tried to tell Him to leave me alone and He wouldn't. He sat there with me until I finaly gave it all over to him and he healed my brokenness. I think that is why I fight against Him sometimes. I know that he is going to heal, help, and restore me and I don't want him to. Sometimes I just want to feel the pain and shame and I don't want him to touch me or look at me. But, He won't go away and I always end up giving in. My point is this, we are not our own judge. We are not called to judge ourselves. We will destroy ourselves if we try to do it all ourselves. I had this vision of a Christian who put handcuffs on their hands and sat in the corner and wept. God came into the room and tried to take off the cuffs, but the Christian pulled away. Eventually the Christian allowed God to come and release him and then he held him in his arms. This vision is so true of many Christians. When we feel we have done wrong or messed up, we chain ourselves up and try to discipline ourselves. Then when God comes and tries to take it all away and release us, we pull back from his touch of love. When we finally give into him, we are so broken spiritually that He has to heal us even further. My prayer for you is that you will know the value you hold in the Father's eyes. Take some time and surrender everything to God. Don't judge yourself anymore. Allow God to come and heal and restore and renew you. Allow him to take your weakness and make you strong.
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