The way that we do bar ministry is that the teams take
turns- so Julies team goes out and we stay back and intercede in prayer, and
the next night we go out and Julie’s team stays back. On this past Tuesday, Kristen had some awesome time with the
Lord in the morning and got “words” for each of us from Him. She wrote them all out, and our
‘assignment’ for the evening was to spend time with God.
Here is what mine said:
“Erika, I did not come to earth to be judge
of your life. I came to be lover
of your life. Read the story of
the girl with the alabaster jar (Luke 7:36-50). I came not to weigh you down with condemnation You saw last night the painstaking way
I offered myself up for you. (I
had watched Passion of the Christ for the first time the night before.) Only love is a strong enough motivator
to endure so much pain. You have
walked a life of sin, I have come to release you into a life of forgiveness and
love.
Only
love me. That is all I ask of
you. LOVE ME! Come before me with your tears. Come to me with all the sins you still
feel condemned for and pour them out at my feet like oil. Break the alabaster jar of sins you
still feel condemned for and pour them onto me and hear me say, You Are
Forgiven!
After you do this, listen and meditate on the song O Happy
Day by Kim Walker. You are
loved.” (Kristen actually had a
whole playlist for me to listen to.)
God taught me a lot on Tuesday night. I realized that all of my thoughts about being seen as a
lesser Christian because of my divorce are lies. That just because I am divorced, that does not mean that God
will not bless this marriage.
Here is an
excerpt from my prayer journal:
“I just had a thought as I was writing this. Not having a penalty or a consequence
for my divorce is Your MERCY- but when on top of that, You gave me a great
husband who loves You and adores me- that is GRACE. You knew what I was up to-it’s not like you
accidentially brought Jaimie and I together-and You did it after I had sinned
by breaking my marriage vows.
Giving Jaimie to me was You showing me Your Grace through my sin. You REDEEMED marriage in my life.”
I prayed for forgiveness and redemption in my past with
wicca, tarot cards and astrology.
The reason that I was drawn to those things was because of my desire for
knowledge. I wanted so badly to
have some security in my life, and in my future-a security that could come only
from knowing what would happen next.
I read Tarot cards and looked to the stars for answers, and in that, I
felt security.
As I walked the streets last Saturday night during bar
ministry, I saw a woman reading Tarot cards and realized that I hadn’t seen
anything like that in a while. I
did nto feel tempted by the cards, but seeing it brought my memory back to a place
where I was able to make decisions based on what I knew would come next-and a
part of me really missed that ill-gotten knowledge.
I
shared this at our team meeting last Sunday. Tim said that he could hear victory in my account. That even when I was really tempted to
read my cards or have them read back when I was so fearful and unsure about the
Navy-I didn’t. And the reason I
didn’t was that I knew how far God had taken me away from that life, and I did
not want to ‘un-do’ it all, or basically spit in His face. I thought it was better to endure the
uncertainty rather than to go back to where God found me in the first
place.
Kristen
made an interesting point- she said that just because the cards told me A
future, didn’t really mean much. I
was using satan’s power and it was predicting his future for my life- not
God’s. Food for thought, for sure.
I
DO see the victory in this situation, but not the redemption. How is God turning all that satan took
from me and turning it for good?
How will my story bless the Kingdom? There are parts of my life that I can now look back on and
totally see the redemption- I have gotten to a place with a few things where I
am not only not unhappy that they happened, but actually grateful. These things have enabled me to hang
out with prostitutes and look at them in their beautiful, sweet eyes and say in
all honesty, and zero judgment, “Not only am I NO BETTER than YOU, I am also
NO DIFFERENT“.
More from the old prayer journal:
“All of my sins have been atoned for-You no longer see
them. Now that I am hidden with
Christ, You only feel love for me and do not see my mistakes and sins-they are
already forgiven. So I guess You
just look at me with love. This
atonement already happened, so I guess You are never angrily waiting for me to
come and repent, You just miss hanging out with me when I run from You thinking
that You are angry with me. You
wanted relationship so badly that You paid my debt in full-and paid it in
advance so we would not have to keep a tally of transactions of debt and
payment, debt and payment. You did
not want any of that to get in the way of our relationship”
“I was made for intimacy! The whole reason You made any of us-was to be friends with
us. You think of me as Your
friend. You want us to hang out
because You love me. You made this
earth in all of its beautiful variety as a gift to us-there is no reason why
there should be so much on this earth to delight our senses other than you
created our senses and wanted to bless us in so many ways every day. It is a love letter from You to
us.
You must have known what a frustrating bunch we would turn
out to be-but You made us anyway.
It seems that the frustration was worth it to You to in the end have
authentic relationships with those of us who would love You back.”
I am getting to a place where I mentally understand God’s
love for me- there is absolutely NO OTHER EXPLANATION for my life. But I am praying that I will begin to
FEEL this great love that He has for me.
Not because I think that my emotions are at all a good indicator of
reality, but because it would bless me so much- and make this love FEEL REAL to
me.
That is where I am at.
Redemption Road part 3 coming tomorrow
