Back when I signed up for the race A big reason why was not because I could have a deeper love for Jesus but because I wanted to go as far away from home as possible and there wasn’t much further than India I thought. So, said an easy goodbye to everything and everybody I had known my entire life. I packed up my things and suddenly I was in Swaziland and I thought, “This place is perfect, it’s NOTHING like home!” There were mountains that seemed to stretch from end to end of the country, red dirt and dust everywhere, it was hot but not humid, and I was surrounded by people I knew nothing about, and they new nothing about me. It was exactly what I wanted! The opportunity to get out of my small town where everyone knew who I was, and the mistakes I had made. I could finally start over and appear to be the perfect Christian, an innocent girl who has never sinned, and has it all together. (Which couldn’t have been farther from the truth!!!) I could start over in Swazi, and make myself to be who I had always wanted to be. So I tried, but I knew that’s no who I was. I’m not perfect, or in any capacity have it all together. However, I learned in Nepal and India that God didn’t want me to start over at all. Instead, God gave me this year as a gift, a safe place to let the things that had hurt me in my past come to the surface and then to ACTUALLY heal from those things and bring them into the light.
Throughout Swazi I learned God no longer wanted me to be bound to my guilt, shame, and fears and I recognized that but at that time I didn’t know how to surrender that to God. Then in India I had the opportunity to do an inner healing, facilitated by my amazing squad leaders, Bry and Kayleigh. It was then that I learned that God wanted me to actually HEAL specifically from my sexual sin not to just suppress it and act like it never happened, which is how I had been living for quite a while. I had let time wear away the memories but they still haunted my subconscious in vivid dreams.
Guys, sin is sticky, heavy, dark, and wants to trap you. It’s goal is to separate you from God and make you feel unworthy. Satan wants to make you feel alone! But NO, THE VIEL WAS TORN, Jesus took ALL, every body’ssins of the past, present, and future, and said, “It is finished!” No more do we have to be separated from Jesus, no more do we have to make ourselves “right” before we come before the Lord. He asks us to, “come as you are”. The huge thing I have learned is that once you bring sin into the light it loses ALL power! That is what freedom feels like!
Throughout the past 7 months I have learned that God extended me grace and freedom and forgave all of my sins the moment I came to him and repented. Although I knew I needed God’s forgiveness I didn’t know how to accept his forgiveness as final until I accepted God’s huge, mad grande Amor!
Now I believe it, I know it to be true in my head and my heart. No one can take that away from me. I am finally free from sin nd guilt and shame an all the icky feelings that come with it. And you can be too, just ask Jesus for forgiveness and accept his generous love for you!
