Deliverance (Day 439)

It's funny how fast things can change in eighteen days. It's funny how quickly a love can rekindle in one's heart. From the outside no one would recognize any difference. Circumstances haven't changed, nothing has changed, but at the same time something must have. Where along those eighteen days did The Lord of Heaven and Earth start molding my heart like a Potter molds his clay, I don't know? But I sense that warmth again. That desire to be only His. That feeling of having a captured soul is freeing. I belong to Him, I am His.

Once again the Lord has done another number to my heart. He took a girl going cold and breathed His warm life back into her. I'm still as confused as ever about my purpose for being in the situations I am. Nothing really has changed to the naked eye. Everything is internal.

It might have started when it was brought to my attention that I didn't give compliments out very easily. Or maybe it was the second time someone told me that in a matter of two days. That might have been the time when I really sat still and asked myself why that was. These were two people who didn't know each other. They had never spoken, but somehow seemed to tell me the same thing. A new thing that had crept up into my life and language was major sarcasm. I had always been a bit sarcastic but never like this. This sarcasm was of a different breed. It was a front, a wall. It kept people from seeing my heart. If they couldn't see it then they couldn't hurt it and in doing that I was hurting it myself. Once I realized that, I had to break it down. We are called to love. My true nature and God's will is to love people wholeheartedly no matter how often I get hurt. And because of that will I must do it. So out goes the defensive, can't see who is really behind these eyes sarcasm, and back comes the playful sarcasm that crept up in jokes here and there. That right there has made a huge difference. Allowing myself to love others has let me feel that love again.

It might have also started when I was asked to give my mom my favorite Bible verse. That really isn't an easy task. There have been so many that have shaped my life. When someone asks me what my favorite verse is I'm more likely to flop the entire Bible down in front of them and say, "There it is." I didn't take this task lightly. I started combing over the highlighted pages picking out key ones that had been stepping stones in my few years of faith. I read one love letter to the next and started to feel a passion, a desire, a longing growing inside of me. Oh how a few simple words on a page can do so much.  I wrote down a full page of scriptures and started eliminating them one by one. But as I marked them off the list I read them again and the words went right to my soul. They quenched it's thirst for God and rejuvenated a yearning to know and be known. The last four were the hardest to pick from. Mostly likely because they were scriptures God had personally given me.

The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.

Exodus 14:14

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.

Psalm 40:1

Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Proverbs 31:30

She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.

Proverbs 31:25

These were my final four. Be still, heard me, true beauty, strength and dignity all struck a cord. "Be still in the confusion my child", "I always hear you", "you truly are a beautiful woman", "you have nothing to fear." All words I've heard from Him, all words I try to live by, and all great reminders from the God who calls me His own.

So there it is, my deliverance from a Savior who always heals, always protects, is always trustworthy, and someone I can always put my hope in. "He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand." Psalm 40:2