My church completed a series called 40 Days of Breakthrough a few weeks ago. Honestly, I loved the fact that my church took time out of the year for us to make space for God to MOVE. Now there’s nothing magical about the process. They did encourage us to do the 5 Ps: Prayer, Promise, People, Personal Change, and Praise. Prayer meant praying unto the area you were seeking breakthrough in, but I also prayed before hand for guidance on what area. God was very clear that I needed to address the fear of rejection and abandonment. The Promise meant finding a promise from the Word to carry you through the 40 Days. My promise was Psalm 27:10, “Although my father and mother have abandoned me, yet the Lord will take me up [adopt me as His child].” This is a verse from my life chapter and it really helped me when I felt a heightened sense of my fears during the 40 days. The people I relied on during the 40 days were the ladies in my discipleship group from my lifegroup, my mentor, and a couple of close friends. I made a point to update and share and also listen to their areas of breakthrough and prayed for them as well. This is important I think because you can get hung up on yourself and your focus can be too much on what you are dealing with, but lose sight of the body of Christ working together in this towards a breakthrough. I’m thankful my prayers helped my friends to receive breakthrough. The personal change I did was fasted from sweets for 14 days. I also daily worshiped and did some sort of quiet time with Jesus every day. For the worship, I went to encounter which is a worship night my church offers that is unscripted and totally guided by the Holy Spirit, spontaneous worship is pretty much a challenge for me if I’m honest. But I love the environment and atmosphere because I can easily connect with God and so I usually spend time completing a listening journal, which is writing down the dialogue back and forth from me and God when I pray. During the breakthrough, this time of encounter night was the revelation I needed! More on that later! Lastly, praise which is self-explanatory. But I will say, I praise God for the opportunity of a breakthrough, the promise of a breakthrough, and for who He was even if a breakthrough didn’t come during these 40 days. I knew I could still follow Him even if what I asked for never came.
I shared earlier in the last post about my hard season Sept-Feb every year. Well, this was the revelation God showed me at encounter: My hard season was directly linked to my fear of rejection and abandonment. Later during my Quiet time one day, God gave me a vision of me in a soybean field, cutting down weeds. But there was one huge and choking out the bean plants around it, so I realized I had to dig it out. I asked the Lord and He said, “There’s a bigger root issue you need to uproot and the breakthrough will come.” I couldn’t figure it out until I met with my mentor. When I explained it all, she was all, “I know what it is, but you’re not gonna like it.” I wanted to know as much as I didn’t want to know! But what she said was indeed the key to unlocking the breakthrough AND was the giant weed God told me to uproot so the breakthrough would come. Forgiveness.
I had forgiven a lot of my past and situations with folks. I had to in order to move forward in life. And in order to heal the pain of my traumatic past, forgiveness was necessary. My mentor told me to go back to the situation that caused my hard season, the time I was fully rejected by my family as a kid and disowned. And forgive every person involved. I spent time praying and asking God how, and I felt led to break it down on an individual basis using a guide my church made called “Tending your heart.” It’s a process of taking the situation, asking God what lies you believed, forgiving the person, asking forgiveness for the lies you believed, and asking God for a promise in exchange. Well, there were 13 people involved and they all had a connection to rejection & abandonment feelings. And as I forgave, 11 different lies were uncovered that I had believed since I was a kid!! Were are talking lies I believed for 28 years!
The time has come for me to, once again, embrace forgiveness. Many survivors deny the need for forgiveness, mostly because it's heavily misunderstood. It's often misunderstood because of what we misunderstand about God. According to the Bible, and my own personal encounters with God, He doesn't "forgive & forget" and He doesn't expect us to do so either. God is all-knowing as much as He is merciful and gracious. He calls us to be equally merciful and gracious while we have limited knowledge and understanding compared to Him. God forgives us "from the east is to the west," and "freely" because of Jesus. He no longer holds us to a weight of the sin, or the penalty it deserved because Jesus paid it. For us, we aren't charged to be Jesus to others, as Jesus alone can forgive deep wounds and bring a spiritual restoration. God does get to the place with us that, even though we have to reapproach Him for forgiveness, "He keeps no record of wrongs." He doesn't hold us accountable to what we did last year, or ten years ago. He holds us to today, this present moment, because before Him the past is the past. I believe He's all-knowing in that He knows my whole story, but when I face Him today He sees who I am today alone. This is what He requires of us as well. We need to be able to forgive the weight of what's deserved from the action someone else did.
When it comes to trauma, or abuse it feels like the abuser(s) get away with it. In my case, this has been the truth when you look at the laws in the USA during the time frame, as well as the old methods of the child welfare agencies who used to work more on family preservation than child protection, regardless of the welfare of the child. I felt for a long time I had every right to my anger, it was justifiable from a spiritual, moral, and humanitarian standard. However, I have learned that I can't just stay there in the place where I'm angry. Anger takes root to bitterness and bitterness creates a field of thistles and thorns for Satan to harvest. I was becoming mean, cruel, and unnecessarily harsh to others. In my twenties, I was putting up unhealthy boundaries and walls that didn't help me heal, but intensified the hurt I felt inside. When it comes to your trauma, believe me when I say it, you will NEVER forget. I have had it reappear as a factor in many places it shouldn't have to. There's times I have felt I already faced this layer of the onion and it has been chopped & sauteed in the fryer of healing, only to have it resurface in a new way. It can be so frustrating because it feels at times there's three steps backwards for every ten steps forward you take. Just because I remember it and have to work hard to heal daily doesn't mean that I'm unable to forgive, or shouldn't try to forgive. I forgive because I remember the pain and agony, along with all the hard work I went through to heal so I am the person I am today, in this moment. Just like back in my twenties, when I had to go back and forgive and release anger. God showed me I had to do this again to receive further breakthrough. If I don't forgive, my work is in vain because the hardened heart can't heal. This is where we are called to be like Christ in our forgiveness: to forget the offense in such a way that you no longer hold it against them, or seek to match it in equal pain. Just like God sees me every day, He knows my story and my life along with the failures and He chooses to see the blood of Christ over them and no longer hold them against me.
This blog post was first started in December and I have worked on it over the past week. It's funny looking back at it and see how much freedom remains 6 months later. Forgiveness was the cure and the way I received breakthrough over rejection and abandonment. The past 6 months have been HARD and that will come in further posts. However, I have been enveloped by the body of Christ. I have been placed in family, which is more than an earthly family. I have felt far from abandonment & rejection and I'm so thankful to God to be able to finish this post and have a record of what God has done! He's so faithful!
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