Your Voice Matters

About two weeks ago I received a message in my Facebook inbox from a woman I had never met.   She was asking me how I created some of the pins I had posted on Pinterest for Mary DeMuth's book launch team.  (As I mentioned in my last post, I was blessed to be chosen to be on Mary's launch team for her latest book that is due out in October. The Wall Around Your Heart).

As it turns out, this woman was also an author, getting ready to launch a new book. So...being the book lover that I am and intrigued by the title of her book, I offered my graphic design services for peanuts and an advance copy of her book so that I could read it and mine the depths for great quotes.  She took the bait! ;-) Rats! I should have asked for chocolate!!

And the rest, as they say, is history...or rather her-story.  I have a  beautiful new friend that I want to introduce to you. Her name is Jo Ann Fore. I won't go into the details of her life but you can find out more about her here...Jo Ann's Story.  I now know her as a woman who cares deeply about her friends, new and old. She is a woman with a burning passion to reach out to those who are hurting and broken. Her heart is to see them healed and whole. I am so very thankful that God has allowed our paths to cross. 

Now I want to introduce you to her book When A Woman Finds Her Voice.  No...not the book itself, at least not yet.  But to the things within my heart that have been awakened in the reading of her words.  

I am now a part of a community of women who have a desire to use our unique voice, each one of us,  to usher in hope and healing in the lives of other women. Those women whose voices have been stifled...from shame, threat, pain, fear...or whatever has caused them to shut off a part of themselves to the world, to their own family and friends.  Many in this community want to reach out because we have found healing for ourselves. Healing for wounds that were buried...buried just beneath the surface for some, and very deep within the spirit for others...soul wounds. 

I haven't quite figured out exactly how I am going to participate in this particular journey...though I have been reaching out to women for many years sharing stories from my own past...stories of brokenness and redemption. I have experienced so much throughout my life...the good, the bad, and the ugly.  I witnessed the sexual abuse of my childhood best friend. No child should ever have to experience the betrayal and abuse that she endured...and as a young girl, I didn't even know how to put words to scenes I had witnessed.  I have experienced loss through the death of many family members and friends through the years...beginning with my father when I was just 10 years old, my very best friend in high school...and more death...continuing on throughout my life. My husband and I walked, cried, and prayed through two traumatic brain events with our son, almost losing him both times, and we are still traveling the road of recovery with him.   I have been married for 30 years...to the same amazing man, whom I love dearly and who continues to love me in spite of my quirks.  But I will tell you that not all of those years was he 'so amazing'...but then, neither was I.  

I guess you can say I have scars...lots of them from the hurts of life.  But....they are scars, not wounds. Scars are an indication that healing has taken place.  

I love to share stories of healing.  Jesus also loves healing and redemption. He loved us enough to share his wounds with us...those scars in His hands and feet.  The very proof that He understands us in our hurts. He understands rejection and emotional pain. He chose to walk the road that led to hurt, pain and rejection...even a cruel death on a cross for you and I. Oh how thankful that He walked that particular road so that we don't have to. He walked that path of woundedness so that we could find hope and complete healing...wholeness!

We all have scars of some kind. We live in a broken world; broken as a result of sin entering the world. But Christ came to give us life. To heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. Allow Him to heal your wounds, and let the scars that are left behind become the proof of the healing work of redemption and restoration in your life. When you begin to let that truth sink in...the truth of your worth to the God of all creation, the truth that you are loved beyond your wildest imagination, sweet sister...that is when the healing begins.  As Jo Ann says in her book,

Those thin places

where truth seeps through—

those are the places where Jesus walks, the places we find healing.

Won't you join us on this journey? Won't you find your voice?

God..."heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds."                                                                                                ~Psalm 147:3

I am linking up with Jo Ann and other beautiful women every Wednesday to talk about finding our voices...sharing our stories.  Not to rehash the past...or to commiserate over our wounded-ness but with freedom and joy and purpose to share our hearts and allow God to use us...our voices...to make a difference, to help women find hope and healing. 

Leave Your Broken Past...

It's that time again! Linking up with Lisa-Jo Baker and the hundreds of others who participate in the Five Minute Friday link-up. Okay...I missed last week. I was very busy with my daughter and grandson.  Times with my family are precious to me so I hope you'll excuse the slip-up.

The challenge...to use the word prompt of the day and write for five minutes flat..." no extreme editing; no worrying about perfect grammar, font, or punctuation. Unscripted. Unedited, Real."
I will admit...today I went over the five minutes.  It's soooo hard for me to do this in five minutes flat.  But I will still participate even when I go over because this has been a great discipline to get me writing again.

Broken
Go...

We live in a broken world. 

The evidence of the brokenness of this world is all around us.  Just turn on your television. Tune into the news...soon your head will be swimming with stories of crimes and all kinds of atrocities being committed, illnesses, tragedies, modern-day slavery, pain, and death. 

Yes...our world is broken. The brokenness surrounds us, in our cities, in our neighborhoods, in our houses, even in ourselves.  

We live in a broken world because we live in a fallen world. Our brokenness stems from the fact of a severed relationship between God and man....way back in the beginning...in the garden.  Sin entered the world at that point severing the perfection of the relationship between God and mankind. Sin...in the form of a choice...to desire to be as a god, to choose one's own desire and notion of what is good over obedience to God.  No longer would man walk in the garden with God, the one who truly knows what it is to be good.

But God is love and God is good.  

And so...from the beginning He had a plan and a purpose. He would send His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.  To be born, a baby, and grow into a man to walk this earth...fully human and yet fully God. Emmanuel...God with us.  He lived out his short life on this earth in perfection...in perfect relationship with the Father...sinless. 

Yet he suffered as we all do...he suffered pain, persecution, abuse, bullying, and more. He was even led into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan...in ways that represent every kind of temptation that is common to man. 

And yet...HE DID NOT SIN.  He fought back with the very Word of God. He was and is the Word...the very bread of life.

And then He walked in the garden with His Father. 

In the garden, much different than that other garden so long ago. In this garden, He would be betrayed by one close to Him. He was taken and beaten and stripped and spat upon and finally...crucified on a cruel cross. He died and was placed in a tomb.

BUT HE DID NOT REMAIN IN THE TOMB!!  He arose from death to life.  There were hundreds of eyewitnesses to this fact.  He beat death, He beat sin, He beat Satan's hold over this world.  Finally... He returned to the right hand of the Father. 

Leaving us...but not as orphans.  We have the Holy Spirit to help us fight not only our own battles but the battles of the broken ones of this world. We have the Holy Spirit to breathe life back into our broken lives.

But do we avail ourselves to this gift?  The enemy wants us to believe that we are all still broken. That it is all helpless, that he has won. But the war has already been won by Christ...we have battles and skirmishes to fight out on this earth...but the ultimate victory is ours in Christ Jesus! Because  He rose we know that we who are in Christ will also one day rise with Him. 

So every morning I walk in my 'garden': my quiet place with God. Yes, "He walks with me and He talks with me and He tells me that I am His own."  And because of this, I can trust all of my broken pieces into His healing hands.  Oswald Chambers said it best,

 “Leave the broken, irreversible past in God’s hands and step out into the invincible future with Him."

I ask only to be broken by the things of this world that break the heart of God.To be moved to be used by Him to bring hope and healing into others lives as He has mine. 

How about you? 

Have you placed the brokenness of your life into the hands of Jesus?

You may also want to check this post on brokenness...Tears...Breaking the Dam of Hardened Hearts

Now it's your turn...

1. Write for 5 minutes flat - no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.

2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. And then absolutely, no ifs, ands or buts about it, you need to visit the person who linked up before you &encourage them in their comments. 

Seriously. That is, like, the rule. And the fun. And the heart of this community...

Tears...Breaking the Dam of Hardened Hearts

Broken...

 She reached down into the depths of her heart stirring up the tears that had lain dormant far too long. As the hardness began to break in to pieces, the tears ran in streams down her cheeks. The floodgates burst open, releasing the pain and hurt of the deception she had been carrying. 

The very thing that had caused the hardening of her heart, the wall of her emotions to hold fast, was now gone. Washed away...flowing away with the turbulent river of tears of a repentant heart.   

            Broken.

                                                At last, she was free!

The previous paragraphs? An excerpt from a book that is yet to be written.  I won't expound on the story at this time because it is really just a seed that God planted in my heart...it will take much prayer, research, and the hard work of getting it on the page before it will come to fruition. It sort of just burst forth from my fingertips after contemplating something I had read in my devotional time one morning last week. It was most definitely one of those God whispering moments...and my heart...and fingers responded.  

What I had read was from Elmer Towns book, How To Pray: When You Don't Know What to Say. If you are looking for a good book on how to pray or just ways to refresh and reinvigorate your prayer life I highly recommend this book.  However, since this post is not a 'book review', I will leave it for you to check it out and discover the treasures therein. 

As I read the chapter in Towns' book on repentance and deliverance, I was reminded of the importance of tears in our prayer life...more specifically, my prayer life. Towns writes: "to be an effective intercessor, we must have a 'weeping heart' before God. If our eyes are always dry, it means that our soul is also probably dry. And a dry heart eventually becomes a hardened heart." He goes on to tell us that tears and brokenness is the avenue to a softened heart before God. Tears and brokenness can push aside the pride long enough to expose our hearts for what they have become, hard and dry. Those very tears are a good sign that we are broken and ready to deal with our sin. We are ready to repent. 

This has me asking myself...how soft is my heart before God? How many times have I cried over the sins I, myself, have committed. How many times have I wept over the very things that break the heart of God?  And surely our personal sins, among many other things, break His heart. 

How many times have I cried for other's, whose hearts are hardened by the harsh realities of the sin-soaked society in which we live...cried for those who have chosen to walk in defiance to the plan God has for their life. Do I cry over those who cannot even see that they are spiritually sick and have the cure to their sickness within their grasp, yet fail to latch on? Like a man in a swiftly swirling whirlpool getting weaker and weaker as he fights against the current, yet he refuses the lifeline that has been thrown to him.  

I pray that God will soften my heart so that I may weep for those who don't even realize there is a reason to weep.  To weep for those who are living broken lives and don't know how to fix what is broken.  May the tears break down the wall of pride in my own heart so that I can see ever clearer the sins that are present in my life, so that I may repent and walk in obedience to the Word of God. I pray that the Lord will soften my own heart so that He can use me to reach out to others with open arms and open heart. May they see the love of Christ in my words, in my actions, and within my heart.

Lord help us to weep tears of repentance...to accept your forgiveness...so that times of refreshing may come.

I could use a bit of refreshing...

                                                 How about you?

*This post conains an affiliate link.
SaveSave