WHEN PEACE, NOT PAIN GETS THE FINAL WORD.

Angie’s bags were packed.  She’d walked back into the room a dozen times. Each time in hopes to renew her strength to let go and leave.  She knew she wanted nothing less, but somehow the uncertainty kept tugging at her.  How was she going to do this? How was she going to walk out and leave?  All she had ever known had happened here, but she knew she wanted better for herself.  As she stood in the middle of the room one last time it was as if the words of the past seemed to seep from the walls.  The countless nights of sitting up in her bed, head in hands crying because of the rage filled drunkenness outside her bedroom door. 

A sudden noise from her door being opened her snapped out of her memories.  Her brother smiled, “Are you ready, sis?”

She stared at him, as if her sudden rush back to reality was just sinking in.  “Yes, I have to do this.” 

As her car drove down the entry way to the freeway she looked over at her brother.  “Do you realize what I just did? I just packed up my entire life into a few boxes and left.”

Her brother grabbed her hand. They rode in silence for a while.  Each in a bit of shock that they were doing. The sunset beaches of L.A. called her name, but she couldn’t help but hear all the echoes of her past crawling in.

Her heart so full of promise to what lay ahead.  With each passing mile marker, her excitement grew.  I’m out, I’m finally out.  I won’t have to watch the drunken stammering.  I won’t have to listen to the endless hours of yelling, anymore.  I am finally free!

Angie was free, but only in the physical sense.  She was right, she no longer was going to lay site to the alcohol filled evenings, endless mood swings, and nightly screaming sessions that her childhood home had held for her. But the pain of what she had been through… Well, she had packed that in her suitcase and that was coming with her to L.A…..she just wasn’t aware of it yet.

I think many of us have thought as Angie did.  Out of sight out, out of mind, right?  And while this theory might work with certain things in life, it doesn’t work with the deeply embedded pain we have suffered through in our lives. Pain is a sneaky issue. We can do our very best to wrestle it down, and keep it at bay for a bit, but inevitably, be it a year…5 years….10 years… it finds its way back up to the surface of our thinking. 

For many of us, the pain of our past won’t even leave us for a day. This was the case with Angie.  All she had to do was close her eyes and the events of the last 19 years would play back over her memory.  The doubt, the fear, the guilt, so tangible that at times, that she was sure that the events had just taken place. 

I would venture to say that by this time in the story, you can identify with Angie in some form or the other.  The desire to not face the pain, but instead to ignore it…. I can’t tell how many times I tried applying this strategy to my life.  Yet no matter how many different ways I tried to deafen the pain, it never was permanent. 

Angie tried these methodologies as well, but none of them worked for her either.  She too found herself amidst a temporary distraction at best, but nothing ever permanent.  Life had been very hard on Angie while growing up at home and while she had known Jesus and loved him, she was not utterly sure she could trust him with the pain that she had undergone.  She knew he loved her, but did he love her enough to be trusted with her deepest cut, her Achilles’ heel of the heart? Was she sure that Jesus would in fact see the pain for what it had done to her, how it had broken her?  Or would Jesus look at the pain and instead of treating it with tender care, would He in fact become insensitive to her needs and hurt her further?  These were all risks that Angie was too scared to take for many years of her life. 

Years later, Angie had worn herself out.  She had spent so many years thinking that she was the only one she could ever trust with her pain….but in shelling herself off from Christ’s help, she had also exhausted herself.  It was so tedious living with her fists in the air, her heart buried deep within where nobody could see it. It was overwhelming always trying to look out for where the next hurt might come from. She had mentally and physically reached a dead end road.  She KNEW something would have to change, but what?

Exhaustion wanted to speak louder than anything in her life, but she kept feeling a nudge within her thinking.  “You haven’t exhausted everything yet, Angie, in fact….you’ve never even given Christ a chance with your pain.”

Angie tried a few more vain attempts to “fix” herself, but each fell apart quicker than she could put them together.  Finally, Angie decided to take Christ at His word to help her. But she knew she could only manage to let go of a small amount of the pain to Christ.  With each passing day, she would waiver between releasing it and pulling it back.  A few months later, she found that she was a little bit better at releasing some of the pains and not having quite the same tug to pull it back within her.  Her guards were still up, and quite high, but step by step, day by day, event by event.

Angie is still working to move on in life, but it has been two years now, since she decided to take Christ up on His offer to help her.  She has seen changes in her life.  She lives with a more sustained peace that she had ever seen in her life. She is also learning that Christ is like nothing she has ever experienced.  All He wanted her to do was to be willing to let Him in, even if at the smallest amount at first, so she could start experiencing His Peace and His Love.

He started helping Angie to see that He agreed that what had gone on in her life was not fair, and yet that none of it had the final say over her life.  The peace that Angie has found has begun to have a lasting effect on her.  The movie reel in her head doesn’t play her pains of the past over and over as much anymore.  Instead, she focuses on the promises of where Christ wants to lead her.

I think many of us feel as Angie did. We become convinced that Jesus wants us to quickly rush and just “get over” the pains in our heart. As if it is a great sprint to take part in.  But, Christ is not like that.  He does ultimately want to see you free in every way of your life, but Christ knows that our pain runs deeper.  In fact, in many cases, the pain runs deeper than we understand, but at the root of every pain in your life, is a seed and that is where Christ goes to work.  We, as human’s can only hope to keep pruning the pain back in our life.  Yet in all our efforts, all we ever seem to do is cause the pain to rise up stronger than it was prior to our trying to “fix” it.

Christ brings the only one who can truly understand how wide, how deep and how vast your pain is, and the wonderful thing is that His love covers everywhere that your pain reaches. Being Loved for REAL for the FIRST time in your life, is what we are being offered in Christ, and He is willing to take a lifetime to show you. 

On a Personal note:

I know how hard it is to start letting go of the pain.  But, I can’t encourage you more to believe that Christ isn’t out to hurt you, He’s out to help you.  It’s going to take time, but Christ couldn’t be more committed to you. Pastor Daniella

  

I remember when I was younger reading the footprints poem. Places in the sand marking whether the Lord had carried me through the troubles of life or walked with me side by side. I remember reading over this poem finding it beautiful and yet maybe in a way utterly missing all that this could mean to me. When I read the poem I was left with a thought, "Why wouldn't Christ want to carry me through all the troubles I face in this lifetime?" Isn't that a sign that He loves me? In particial, I am right..it is the mercy and love of Jesus Christ when we are carried through a difficutly. Yet, my understanding was limited. If Christ's carrying us means He loves us, then does that mean that all the times where my feet walked out the steps of my troubles, Christ didn't love me? For many years of my life I warred deeply in this troubling feeling. I lived like a pendulem. My mindset was, if all was going well in life, God loved me, but if things were not going well, then I had angered God and I was inturn being punished for it. Christ's love is not failed the way human love is!! We try to be unconditional, and in some cases, we do succeed, as much as a human can, but never once have we offered the same calibur of love to others or ourselves as Jesus has for us. His love is not based upon a merit system. His love not based on whether you offer it in return to Him. Instead, Christ's love is based on a choice, a nature, so in unison with WHO Christ is that He can be nothing less!!! The times when we are carried through troubles as opposed to walking the trials out side by side with Jesus, seem a moving target at points in life, doesn't it? The minute you think that you've decided just when Christ is going to carry through a situation, He will cause you to walk it out. Is this due to His feeling the name to toy with our emotions? No, honestly, it is not. Instead it is the Wisdom of the Lord and His understanding that complacency within the human heart is very easy to come upon. If we KNEW that we weren't really going to give much effort towards something and yet we were going to have fantastic results, we might easily become less invested in our relationship with Jesus. Nothing that Christ Jesus ever does is an action of impulse. Each of His actions are meant for the betterment of us in life. The fault with this thought, WE can't see what He sees, can we? From the outside....it just translates many times to the feeling that Christ is being cruel or not caring. If I told you that I want to start running marathons, you would say that's great...how long do you run right now? If I answered, "I don't run", wouldn't you find it ridiculous that I wanted to start running marathons? Preparation would be an essential in order that my goal could be achieved, right? Well, each of us have asked some pretty BIG things from God in life, haven't we?? We too have to have preparation times for what we've asked to be apart of. It isn't cruelty from the Lord that causes Him to walk out some of our troubles side by side with Him. Instead, it's a loving action of Christ knowing what it is going to take to be prepared to fulfill the dreams of our hearts. In a way, you are investing in your future self. Allowing your future self to become more prepared to live our in reality what only your heart's dreams have envisioned thus far. Looking back more in life now. The footprints that my feet have made in the sands of my life are many, but each of those prints have written across them a history that I have built with the Lord Jesus Christ. None of them have been easy, but they have caused me to learn so much about my loving Lord Jesus Christ. They are priceless to me. Pastor Daniella

I remember when I was younger reading the footprints poem. Places in the sand marking whether the Lord had carried me through the troubles of life or walked with me side by side.  I remember reading over this poem finding it beautiful and yet maybe in a way utterly missing all that this could mean to me.

When I read the poem I was left with a thought, "Why wouldn't Christ want to carry me through all the troubles I face in this lifetime?"  Isn't that a sign that He loves me?  In particial, I am right..it is the mercy and love of Jesus Christ when we are carried through a difficutly.  Yet, my understanding was limited.  If Christ's carrying us means He loves us, then does that mean that all the times where my feet walked out the steps of my troubles, Christ didn't love me?

For many years of my life I warred deeply in this troubling feeling. I lived like a pendulem. My mindset was, if all was going well in life, God loved me, but if things were not going well, then I had angered God and I was inturn being punished for it.  Christ's love is not failed the way human love is!!  We try to be unconditional, and in some cases, we do succeed, as much as a human can, but never once have we offered the same calibur of love to others or ourselves as Jesus has for us.  His love is not based upon a merit system. His love not based on whether you offer it in return to Him.  Instead, Christ's love is based on a choice, a nature, so in unison with WHO Christ is that He can be nothing less!!!

The times when we are carried through troubles as opposed to walking the trials out side by side with Jesus, seem a moving target at points in life, doesn't it?  The minute you think that you've decided just when Christ is going to carry through a situation, He will cause you to walk it out. Is this due to His feeling the name to toy with our emotions? No, honestly, it is not. Instead it is the Wisdom of the Lord and His understanding that complacency within the human heart is very easy to come upon.  If we KNEW that we weren't really going to give much effort towards something and yet we were going to have fantastic results, we might easily become less invested in our relationship with Jesus.

Nothing that Christ Jesus ever does is an action of impulse.  Each of His actions are meant for the betterment of us in life. The fault with this thought, WE can't see what He sees, can we?  From the outside....it just translates many times to the feeling that Christ is being cruel or not caring. 

If I told you that I want to start running marathons, you would say that's great...how long do you run right now? If I answered, "I don't run", wouldn't you find it ridiculous that I wanted to start running marathons? Preparation would be an essential in order that my goal could be achieved, right? Well, each of us have asked some pretty BIG things from God in life, haven't we??  We too have to have preparation times for what we've asked to be apart of. It isn't cruelty from the Lord that causes Him to walk out some of our troubles side by side with Him.  Instead, it's a loving action of Christ knowing what it is going to take to be prepared to fulfill the dreams of our hearts. In a way, you are investing in your future self.  Allowing your future self to become more prepared to live our in reality what only your heart's dreams have envisioned thus far.

Looking back more in life now. The footprints that my feet have made in the sands of my life are many, but each of those prints have written across them a history that I have built with the Lord Jesus Christ. None of them have been easy, but they have caused me to learn so much about my loving Lord Jesus Christ.  They are priceless to me. Pastor Daniella

In John 8:36, we read, “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” NLT   We have been set free, but so many of us have allowed the shackles around our minds to bind us so tightly that we aren’t willing to allow the freedom to become a reality to us.  Let’s pretend that I set a gift in front of you, wrapped in a box. When I set the box in front of you, I tell you that within the box you are going to find items you have wanted for years.  You look at me, look down at the box, but you choose not to open it. Due to this decision, you will not benefit from the contents of the box.  This scenario can be used to help further our understanding of the freedom made available in Jesus.  We are free, but we can live an entire life in shackles if we choose.  In Mark 2:22 Jesus says, "And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins." NLTFor me, this scripture shows us that Jesus does not want to pour new thinking into an old mindset.  In other words, if someone has a mindset that keeps them in the shackles, and they are unwilling to part with it, what good is their freedom doing them?  When we allow ourselves to be transformed by the love of Jesus, we will start to soften in our mindsets.  Through this softening, we can begin to identify areas in our lives where we are hindering freedom to be a current reality in our life.  Just one example of this hindrance to freedom would be negative thinking.   Humans can set their minds to see the negative in almost any situation. I will example what I mean.  Years ago, I was at a birthday party for a lady I knew.  When it came time for the husband to give a gift to his wife, he very excitedly presented her with the gift box.  She took one look at the unwrapped box and began to complain about his “gift wrap” selection. She was so irritated at what he chose, that she refused to open the gift.  Find this ridiculous?  It is, but if we allow our minds to stay in the shackles of wrong thinking, we too will miss out on what Jesus has brought to offer us.  Again I site this scripture.   “So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.” John 8:36 NLT   The freedom that Jesus offers is there for us.  Please remember that the Lord gives gifts that look different than the World’s definition.  Try applying this realization to your life the next time that you are facing a difficult situation.  God is offering you freedom in the trouble, but it probably does not look the way you are expecting it to, you have to be willing to dig deep within the “gift box” in order to receive of this offering.  Pastor Daniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Many times when trials are upon our lives, when troubles are presenting themselves within our lives, we quickly begin to question the motivations of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We don't mean to, but we do start to wonder if His conviction to bring to fullness the dreams He once wrote on the walls of our heart.  

A lack of results can quickly cause impatience within the mind of the one in waiting.  So often, we see time as our enemy.  Raising its ugly head to make us wait once more upon it. Yet, what if time were our friend? What if time waited was actually a sign that our path towards our goal was being made straight? (John 1:23) I would imagine that if we saw our waiting period as a friend rather than foe we would find begin to question Christ less.  

As a very goal oriented person, I am also someone very excited by the idea of quick resolutions to all matters. Yet there have been areas of my life that I haven't been able to rush to the result in.  One of the largest of these areas has been that of an emotional healing from what I have gone through as a kid/teen.  I have wanted to rush through the healing process, so desperatley I wanted this.  I just wanted a check list placed in front of me where I could quickly start clicking off each of the boxes and be done with it.  But that isn't how God works. 

He does believe in healing, but on His time and in His way.  Why His time and His way? The reason can be found in some simple life application observances.  I remember years ago, I had some friends who were desperate to build a deck in their back yard.  My friend and his buddy poured out the cement, spread it and then waited for it to set and settle.  My friend, not known for his patience decided the cement was taking too long for him, and instead of waiting for the cememnt to finish setting, he was going to get started building the deck.  Quickly he set about walking around on the still drying cement, setting the posts and building the landing area. He worked at a feverish pace, but the next morning when he came out to observe his progress, he saw that the decking had settle at different heights.  In his hast, he had rushed too many of the process that required time, and instead of a quality product, he and his buddy came to the conclusion that they were going to have to start most of the woodwork over.  

Now you might ask how this applies to your life due to the fact that you're not building a deck, neither am I, but I am trying to build a life founded in stability and a good foundation and it is there that my scenario has application in our lives.  Each of us wants progress, but if we are impatient and we start trying to rush the Lord, we are only harming ourselves. God knows that each of us need to have certain understanding prior to different break through's in our lives.  If we don't allow time for these understandings to take place in our lives, we are at risk that the break through's won't "set" right within our lives, and before long, we will find ourselves back where we started.  I don't know about you, but the idea of cycling over and over this pain I have been living in for many more years to come is a thought that I do not want to entertain.  

I want progress in my life, deeply, but I also know that I have to wait upon God to build the foundations in my life to be strong enough to uphold me upon each step towards getting better that comes my way. 

Christ wants nothing less than healing in our lives. In fact, the healing has already taken place, we are just learning what it is to walk within its reality. Waiting is not our enemy, it is a foundation.   

Personal note:
I, like you, am on this journey of life. I do not even begin to pretend to have it all figured out. I share these blogs because life's events have been difficult, just as they have for you, but I am determined to learn from my Lord and turn these Pains of life to Promises yet to come within my life.  I pray the same will hold true for you.  Pastor Daniella. http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

The joy that we have been given as a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ is priceless. Many of us struggle to understand how to apply the joy of the Lord into our lives enough to gather strength from it.
I remember when my kids were younger, I would observe the events that would trouble them.  Many of these events were simple fixes to a parent, but to child, this was not the circumstance.  I feel the same is applicable to most of the situations that we are facing in our lives now. We trouble our minds so deeply over every issue in our lives, and yet with each, God has already set into motion the solution we will need to the problem.

God knows so much more than we do. I think many of us know this, but we don't apply it in times of pressure.  We resort to statements like, "Since I can't really do anything about what I am dealing with, I guess I will have to ask God for help." We often exhaust everything we can as a human and then reach out for the Lord.  Many of the times when we are rushing around trying to figure out what to do on our own, we are hindering the very strength that God is trying to render to us within our application of His joy in our lives.  We have such strength when we remember that Christ loves us and we are always within His protection, His assistance, His comfort, His sustaining all that we are not on our own. Each of these statements our strength to our ailing souls, but we have to let them live a longer life than just being words upon a page.

Instead, they need to become words where we draw the strength from in order to face all that we are in life.  My daughters will come to me at different points in worry over different matters. After talking over the matter, I am able to help them place perspective to what they are facing and that they can feel reassurance that I am here to help and that they don't have to face their troubles alone.  I reassure them of how loved they are and that we all make mistakes.  You see, this and SO MUCH MORE is what Christ is trying to do for us in our troubles.  He wants us to come to Him to find our strength because He is an unless pool of love, joy, and all things true and positive.

Christ never has a feeling anything less than being in love with us and living for us.  Always deeply desiring to help you lift your head from your troubles and instead to stare into His eyes that bounce in joy over you.

We are loved. We are worth it to Jesus. He's already proven what He felt over us. He already came and gave His life in order that a permanent connection would be eternally in place between you and him. Others in life might have let you down, but this is not true of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So the next time you face something that seems to suck the strength right out of you, instead of rushing to try to fix it all, take a moment.... place Christ first and ask Him to fill you with the joy that He alone can strengthen you with.  Troubles come and go in life, but Christ lasts forever. Pastor Daniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com  https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

A Life Walked Out, Step by Step

Remember being a kid and reaching up with arms out stretched in that universal signal children give of "Pick me up"? You, the kid, were so tired of using your own will to walk around, and instead you wanted someone else to do it for you.  Laziness, not really, just a realization that someone else was there that could, in fact, make life easier.  

When you become a follower of Jesus, you feel the same sort of "relief" is being offered to you again in your life.  Yet, we don't always get carried everywhere, do we?  What do I mean?  Think over the past four years of your life.  Make a mental note of the events that have taken place in those years.  You might have just listed some very powerful miraculous events, but more than likely, you also listed several moments that didn't feel so miracle filled. Let's leave that mental list on hold for a minute. Instead, follow me in a thought...

In life, an incorrect perspective can form.  This incorrect perspective can cause a follower of Jesus to feel that Christ is not rendering help unless He is carrying you out of a situation.  Remember above I asked you to make a mental note of the events that have taken place in the last four years?  Many of those events that you noted weren't situations where you were carried out of the trouble, were they?  This didn't mean that Jesus wasn't there for you.  Those times you weren't carried were actually times where a deepening of your trust was forming in your relationship with Jesus.

The Bible teaches us that we can only please Jesus through faith.  Faith is a very difficult idea to maintain in life, isn't it?  We fade in and out of this idea many times over the course of our walk with Jesus, but there has to become an underlying base of faith.  A foundation that starts to form.  The foundation becomes a faith not based on whether Jesus is there for you in a miraculous manner, but rather a firm understanding that Jesus is there for you all the time, no matter what the natural looks like.  This faith forms when we start exercising out trust towards Jesus.  Times in life when we are not being carried out of a situation serve to further a more personal relationship with Jesus.

Remember those times when you were young, when you did ask to be picked up by a parent, and they told you instead that you were going to have to walk.  At first, you didn't take it so well.  You might have even thrown a bit of a fit at the idea, but as fatigued and frustrated as you were, you still made it.

Don't we feel a bit the same way when we realize that the trial we are facing is not going to be one that Jesus will be carrying us out of?  What one of us wants to hear that we are going to have to walk out a difficult situation step by step?  Yet, if we yield our spirit to humbly learn from Jesus moment by moment, we will find that an inner strength is birthed.  This strength is fortified by the relationship that you and Jesus are building as you together walk out, step by step, of the trial you are facing.  A new relationship between you and Jesus is taking new form.  In place of wavered faith, a new foundation is forming where a vital trust for Jesus is coming to the forefront of your life.

This strengthening helps us to understand the very personal relationship Jesus wants from us. Which one of us really wants a God that only shows up for the miracles, and then walks away?  I know I don't.  I love miracles, but I will not allow life's precious moments of tender help from Jesus pass me by.    Pastor Daniella

 http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com TWITTER: https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella