I grabbed my prayer journal and plopped down on the rocking chair outside. The sun was soft and the breeze was cool, but I didn’t notice, I was too busy griping and complaining. It was a bad morning, plain and simple. A Murphy’s Law morning. Anything and everything had gone wrong. Tears flowed like Niagara Falls from my eyes as I scribbled across my journal. My words resembled the penmanship of a 4 year old as I wrote down all the raw, unbridled feelings and thoughts. As I neared the end of my rant, I felt it necessary to put a name to how I really was feeling. I scrawled the words all out on my page…
forgotten broken
ashamed helpless abandoned
alone empty incapable
sinful afraid
angry
And then I stopped. The faucet of my tears ran out, and I just stared out at the bright green grass in my backyard and took a deep breath. It was as if God gently said “Are you done now?” Sitting there silently for a few minutes, I glanced down at the words on the page and began to see them for what they really were…lies. The lies that the enemy excitedly places on me from time to time, and celebrates when I believe them. It was overwhelming realizing that I was placing these labels on myself and letting them be my identity.
I rocked back and forth as I felt the gentle breeze blow my hair back from my tear stained face. My Rescuer had arrived to pull me out from the pit of lies I had quite successfully dug and then jumped into. He flooded my thoughts with the truth He speaks over me. For every false identity I had taken upon myself, Jesus reminded me what He says about me, and gave me a Word of His own to back it up. I grabbed onto his rope of rescue as I then wrote down all the words He speaks over me. Turning the page in my journal, I took a deep breath and wrote (in my own 30- something handwriting) this prayer:
"I plead with You to help me see myself the way You see me. I hate that I believe the enemy and what he tells me I am. You tell me that You love me, You tell me you make me pure. You tell me that You sing over me and think about me all the time. You say You don’t leave me, that You don’t forsake me. I am blind to the way you see, and deaf to the words You speak to me. Jesus, I want to hear, I want to see, I want to believe. Please help me."
My friend, would you believe the truth that God speaks over you? Would you see my fall into this pit of despair, and subsequent rescue and let it speak to you? He hears your thoughts, He knows what you are believing about yourself and He feels your hurt deeper than you will ever know. His heart breaks when yours does. Will you pour out your thoughts to Him today? It doesn’t matter if you are scribbling illegibly on a notepad, or screaming it at the top of your lungs…speak it out so that He can meet you where you are and give you healing. Let Him speak over you today. Let Him open your blind eyes and your deaf ears. Allow Him to sing over you, to remind you how He really sees you.