There are many stories I could share with you about the last few days…but right now I simply want to share with you the word of encouragement that I feel God has given to me…
Tuesday at training camp we were given 2 hours of solitude to find a spot and journal about grief and loss and the past hurts we’ve been holding onto and need to let go of. I went out and found myself a secluded spot on the lake we were camping by and sat down. I really wasn’t sure how to begin. We had been dealing with the grieving process for a couple of days already and I felt like I had already let it all out. So I prayed, “God show me what it is you want me to focus on right now.” I opened up my Bible and started reading the Psalms from the beginning. As I was going, I would come across promises from God and write them down in my journal as if God were saying them directly to me. See I had grieved over broken hearts, lost relationships, rejection, and all of that. But one thing I hadn’t really grieved over was the loss of my dreams or the unfulfillment of my dreams. I know the verses in the Bible that say God has great and wonderful plans for me and that God will give me the desires of my heart. But to be honest I have felt like God has done the opposite at times. I feel like the desires of my heart have been ripped away from me. So I have been holding on to some real bitterness towards God. I have often yelled at Him and cried out to Him …”God, if you are such a loving Father and give good gifts to your children, then why are you doing this to me!!” I have had my moments where I began to feel like maybe God wasn’t such a loving Father. I began to wondering if He was punishing me or if there was something wrong with me.
So Tuesday, here I was out by the lake reading God’s promises and I come across Psalm 4:7. The author is talking about how God has given him greater joy than when the harvest comes in. And I began to think…Jessica, God wants you to have that joy to, but in order to have it you have to be willing to let go of the bitterness you have toward God. I didn’t know how to let it go what to do, I just knew that I wanted that joy!
Later on that day our next task was to write down on a log the things we wanted to lay at the cross. So of course I wrote those things…my dreams, and the bitterness I had been holding onto. I then carried that log around the lake and up some very steep hills to where they had formed a cross. All the time I was praying and asking God to replace that bitterness with his joy. When I came to the cross I threw down my log and I felt at peace. I know that God will take that calming peace that I felt and turn it into gushing joy overtime, because as Psalm 4:7 says (in my paraphrase)…
God has filled my heart with greater joy than I have ever known!
