He Doesn’t Abandon

”God, did you bring me out here just to die?!!”
My prayer yesterday was much the same as that of the complaining Israelites, who asked that question even after God had miraculously delivered them from slavery to Egypt.

I’ve been having more honest prayers these days. If I feel abandoned, I tell God so, rather than avoiding saying it for fear of offending him.

”If you don’t help me, then I won’t be helped. If you don’t have mercy on me, I won’t be shown mercy. I have no family to rely on, only friends. You have to come through for me, because there is no one else. I would rather kill myself than to go through life alone like this, year after year after year. I’m always struggling alone, trying to make it alone. My panic attacks make me unable to hold down a job. So how can I ever earn a living?”

My whining rambled on. There was not too much truth in my statements, but I told God how I felt. I felt abandoned by him, overlooked, discarded, forgotten.

In being honest about my negative opinions and emotions, I was opening my heart to let God address the issues. If I had harbored the negativity, it would have grown and continued poisoning me and blinding me. But as it was, I cried out to God in my anguish, and he spoke truth to me all day. He.sent help in a wide variety of ways.

I still don’t have an answer for why my life has to be a constant struggle just to have my most basic needs met. But I have a reminder that God is always at work, even when I can’t see it. My naked eye cannot possibly pick up on all the spiritual activity that is constantly going on behind the scenes. But he IS at work, working everything out for my.good.

About three years ago, my brother died of leukemia. Yesterday, I was reading some things that he wrote, and his words reminded me of the unchanging love of Christ. If he could hold on to truth even in the midst of cancer, then I can hold on to truth when my life also seems too painful and unreasonably hard.

God doesn’t owe me any goodness, any kindness, but he gives it to me anyway. He didn’t have to create me. He didn’t have to save me from prostitution, or to break my sexual addiction. He didn’t have to send his Son to die for me on the cross. He could have let me die for my own sins. That would have been more fair. But instead, he chose to love me, and he still chooses to love me. In the future, he is there loving me. Because that is one of the most basic truths about his character: He does not abandon his children!!!! My dad abandoned me, which is likely the reason I’m quick to forget that elementary truth about God’s character.

But when I cry out to him honestly, expressing all my fears of being abandoned and my pain from having been abandoned, he responds quickly. He doesn’t leave my side, for any reason. Ever.

Don’t Settle for Surrogates

sur·ro·gate
NOUN: One that takes the place of another; a substitute.

I formerly had a sexual addiction.  I call it an addiction because I’ve never gone more than six or seven months without having sex, since I lost my virginity.Recently the temptation came up again! And at the same time that the temptation newly arose, a friend of mine who was in a long-term sexual relationship broke up and now is going through a heart break.

So of course the topic is on my mind: non-marital sex.  What are the consequences?  Why do people keep doing it despite the consequences?  Why does society not consider it to be immoral? Etc.

“The problem isn’t that you’re passionate,” says Pastor Mark Driscoll. “The problem is that you’re not passionate ENOUGH.”

I realize that I have a desire sometimes to go have a one-night-stand.  But deeper than that are many other desires, stronger desires, that keep me grounded and prevent me from acting on that more shallow desire.

For example, I desire to be married and build a family with someone I love and trust.  I desire to have complete transparency in that marriage and complete freedom – to be completely naked, both physically AND emotionally, to share my deepest emotions, fears, joys, and thoughts and questions.  And I want him to feel that same freedom, to have a safe place in me.

So when that temptation comes to give myself away cheaply to someone who will only leave me afterward and make me feel more lonely – I remember the deeper desire: to give myself only to a man who is worthy of it and who has earned my trust, my respect, my love.

A second example is this: I desire to be a blessing.  I desire to be a light in this desperately dark and wicked world.  I do shine very brightly in this world.  I am a blessing to so many. I particularly have always cared about immigrants to my country, because they generally feel isolated and out of their comfort zone, so I befriend them.  I’ve been doing this my whole life.  But if I sleep with someone from India – because Indian guys are my weakness – then I’m not only settling for the surrogate of the transparent marriage that I described, but I’m also robbing that immigrant of the blessing that God wanted me to be to him.

I have a shallow desire – to be in bed with certain guys.  But I have a deeper desire which outweighs it, and that is to be a blessing.  I desire to help them feel welcome in my country, to find out what the needs are and then provide the appropriate resources.  I desire to tell them about Jesus.  If I am stupid and act upon my hormones instead of my deeper passion – which is for their wellbeing – then it creates damage both for myself and for them.

Thirdly, my deepest passion is to grow nearer and nearer to my God.  If I sin, by having sex (or even just fantasizing in my head, which makes me equally as guilty) with a person who is not lawfully mine, then I am creating a temporary disconnect between myself and my loving Father.  I haven’t lost his love, for that is not possible, but I’ve lost the intimacy, because I am grieving the Holy Spirit.  So I have to once again ask him to clean out my heart, to forgive my evil desires, to make me new, to direct me with his Spirit, so that I may follow the Spirit’s lead instead of following my sex drive’s lead.

So if I engage in non-marital sex, I am not only quenching my deeper desires, but I am also causing damage, creating emotional bonds and spiritual bonds that are not easily broken.  In addition, I am creating memories that will come back to haunt me and bring shame at the moments when I am growing and thriving the most.  I’ve given in to that temptation to have a one-night-stand sooooo often, so I know the consequences very well.

But there is a way out.  God isn’t trying to limit my fun by saying to wait patiently for marriage.  Rather, he is offering me freedom… the freedom to chase after him and pursue him with all my mind, heart, soul, and strength!  He is more marvelous than any earthly pleasure.  He satisfies all who come to him.  He is my greatest joy and my deepest passion, because he alone reached down and saw my need and met my need – even at his own expense.  He alone is worthy of my delight, my attention, my pursuit, my love, my devotion.

Boys looking for sex and then running away the next morning are not really worthy of my time, let alone my body.  So I really don’t understand why they’re even a temptation for me still.  But Indian boys are, for some reason.  So when I’m tempted with that, I will pray, and God will help me to overcome it.  He will protect me from danger, and he will finish the good work he has started in me, so that my life may continue being for his glory.  I want to be fully satisfied in him, because he is the Lover of my soul.

Chosen

“It’s really hard to worship you on Mother’s Day.  You took away my only son.”

As I kept weeping and weeping, and as all heads were bowed and eyes closed at church, I silently prayed.  A three-year-old girl climbed up into my lap and whispered, “What’s that?” as she touched the wet puddles building up under my eyes.

“Those are tears,” I whispered back. As she is six months younger than my own son, I’ve always had a soft spot for her.  And I soon became her favorite aunty in all the church.  She climbs up on my lap and gives me a kiss every time I see her.

I closed my eyes again, and as she was attempting to dry my tears with the collar of her shirt, I continued praying: “But you are God.  I am not.  You do things out of love, and you do them in your wisdom.  I praise you for your protection of me, for your protection of my son.  He would have been exposed to prostitution, meth, and male prostitution by now, if I had selfishly chosen to keep him for myself.  I could not have forseen all the evil that you spared him from.  You are wise and  you are good.  And you yourself have experienced the loss of your only son.  You know my pain, and you comfort me by surrounding me with small children.”

And I hugged the little girl and just wept and wept and wept.

My fifth Mother’s Day in a row of weeping this bitterly (the first one was during pregnancy), as I also do every year on his birthday.

But as I wept, I had peace because my God is a good God, a loving God, a wise God, and a sovereign God.

More blessings came this weekend, in addition to that peace.  There were too many blessings to list, but I will share one of the most significant ones: I discovered that my panic over my future is directly correlated to the shame I feel about myself.  I discovered this while reading Romans 9.  It’s rather a creepy book of the Bible, that gives me chills to be honest.  But it shifted my thinking this weekend, even though I’ve read it dozens of times before.

God loves me because he has CHOSEN to make me an object of his mercy.  Every person is either an object of God’s mercy or else an object of his wrath.  And the creepy part is that we have NOTHING to do with it; we have absolutely no control over whether we will go to heaven or to hell.  We can’t determine our own fate by being good or being bad.  It has nothing to do with us. Each of us are doomed to hell by nature, by nature we are objects of wrath (Eph 2:3), so really if God was a fair God, we would ALL go to hell, because that’s what we deserve.

We can only be saved by faith, and faith is a gift, not something that we generate within ourselves (Eph 2:19,20).

Well then, isn’t God unfair?  No, he is God.  He does what he wants.  He can make some people for destruction, and others for mercy.  It’s a crazy thought, and not all Christians share that opinion, but Paul (the writer of Romans) strongly believed that. Paul had nothing to do with his own conversion.  He was out slaughtering Jesus’ followers right and left.  He wanted nothing to do with God.  But God chose him.

It’s that simple.

And so my panic subsided.  I realized this weekend: Oh, the reason I don’t have a second job is not because I’ve done something wrong or I’m a failure or God is mad at me or I’m lazy.  I’ve applied to a large number of jobs, had two interviews, and been hired on-call by one, which doesn’t start for awhile.  Really, God is sovereign, and if I don’t have a job after doing working hard to get one, then it’s for no reason other than that God doesn’t want me to have one *right now*.  He could be preparing me somehow for whichever full-time job I end up getting.  He could be giving me this free time because it allows me to have very long weekends at people’s homes and learn the Indian culture and language and experience FAMILY for the first time of my life.  It could be for any reason, but it is certainly NOT because I’m a bad person. Absolutely not.

God is with me because he’s chosen to show me mercy.  He will be there in the future for that same reason.  I don’t have to worry about him abandoning me, since my worthiness is not what drew him to me.  He died for me WHILE I was dead in my sins (Romans 5:8).  He  loved me WHILE I was messy, dirty, not seeking him, selfish, and lost.  So that means he’s here to stay.

Come away with me

Come away with me

It’s never too late

It’s not too late

It’s not too late for you

I have a plan for you!

I have a plan for you!

It’s gonna be wild

It’s gonna be great

It’s gonna be for you

Open up your heart and let me in

“Come Away” by Jesus Culture

Learning! Growing! aaaand repeat!

Wow! This week has been such a blessing to me, and it’s only Tuesday!

How did it all begin? It began on Sunday, with feelings of shame and unworthiness, which I expressed on my blog and in an email to a group of friends who pray for me (I call them my “prayer team” and also my “family”).

Then a woman, whom I’ve met twice, told me she had been reading my blog! She used to be in the sex industry as well.  She was in it for 21 years.  But now she has been following Jesus for many years.  So she remembers the beginning phase of the recovery process, and was able to encourage me and guide me through my recovery issues – namely, shame!

I told her this even affects my ability to hold down a job. She related to that too.  She related to so many things that the average person can’t.  I have countless women in my life who love Jesus and lift me up when I fall down, and believe in me when I’ve stopped believing in myself.  I also know a number of survivors who know about my baggage but do not know Jesus.  So it was with much surprise and much joy that I discovered a former sex worker who has met Jesus and is recovered and confident and a completely new person!  To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever prayed for such a friend. But it’s been a deep longing in my heart to have one like that.

We are going to meet up in person and pray together out loud, and she suggested I pray for all the specific clients whom I can remember.  She said this was healing for her in her beginning phase of recovery.

It’s time to say goodbye to shame!!!  She asked me if I was holding onto shame because I’m afraid of letting go of it.  Food for thought….

In addition to this big surprise blessing, tonight I went to a friend’s house where I go once a week.  Unfortunately, there is a single guy there sometimes.  I should actually say “fortunately” because this has been exposing to me a lot of fear and a lot of legalism that I’ve had embedded in my heart for a long time.

I don’t think I even made eye contact with him.  It is so challenging for me to acknowledge a man, to make eye contact, and especially to have conversation with him.  If he initiates, I can respond without too much trouble.  But even this I do with a sense of guilt.  There were a few occasions where I had to walk near him to get my purse or something, and it felt abnormal and anti-social for me to do so without saying something – even a simple “excuse me” or a “How have you been, [Name]?”

But life is a process.  Last week, I initiated a normal conversation with him.  This week I couldn’t.  That’s okay.  Recovery is like that.  And I’m growing.

A big thing God is working on in my heart this week is:

FAITH

which means: TRUSTING him to do what he said he will do.

Faith is trusting him to follow through.

Without faith, it’s impossible to please God.  And actually, as someone recently worded it to me: Faith is the only way we can please God.  We have nothing else to offer him, except our trust.  And even that trust is a gift from him.

I never thought of it this way before, but by my staying in my shame I’m actually not having faith in Christ’s finished work on the cross.  If I’m bathing in shame as though it were a bathtub, I am essentially punishing myself for the sins that Christ already was punished for!  Christ was punished for MY sins when he died for the sins of the world – because I am one of the people in the world – even though I was born after his death.

So by living enslaved to shame, I am not having faith.

Also, by living enslaved to fear (not interacting with men, not making eye contact, etc), I am also not living by faith.  Fear is a normal human emotion.  But to be enslaved by it is to sin, because it is the opposite of trusting God.

A helpful article I read tonight, which helped me process through some of the legalistic attitudes I still have toward guy/girl relationships is here if you care to read it.  It identified a lot of the teachings I was raised with and, unfortunately, still deeply scarred by.

In my life, fear and shame have always gone hand in hand. The shame is the root of the fear usually.  So when shame loses its hold over my life – which it is about to! – so also will fear.

God has already started this work in me.  I’m excited to watch him complete it! I look forward to being a confident woman of God, understanding my freedom in Christ, no longer living as a slave to my old master Shame.

Trustworthy

I would specifically like to address my readers in the Middle East. Although I do not know who you are, I have been praying for you often, very often, that God will comfort you, provide with hope, with strength, and most importantly with a vision of Jesus.

28 «تَعالُوا إلَيَّ أيُّها المُتعَبِينَ وَيا مَنْ تَحمِلُونَ أحمالاً ثَقِيلَةً، وَأنا سَأُعطِيكُمُ الرّاحَةَ. 29 احمِلُوا نِيرِي [a] عَلَيكُمْ، وَتَعَلَّمُوا مِنِّي، لِأنِّي وَدِيعٌ وَمُتَواضِعُ القَلْبِ، فَتَجِدُوا راحَةً لِنُفُوسِكُمْ.لِنُفُوسِكُمْ.
ﻣﺘﻰ 11:28-29

Lately I’ve been pondering the trustworthy character of God.

Having a dad who abandoned his pregnant wife and several children did not leave me with the impression that I could rely on anyone. He was the foundation of my world, so when he vanished without a warning, my life was left without a foundation.

A variety of other traumas have happened to me, but that one is certainly the one that has left the most permanent impact.

How precious is it to discover that God is different!!!!!!!

A large number of things were prophesied in the Old Testament scriptures, so many years before they ever came to pass. And then they came to pass. This is perhaps the biggest reason why I trust the reliability of the Bible.

With that said, I also believe there is a God because of the existence of life. I work with children and I volunteer with children. The life, energy, beauty, and spontaneity of children always leaves me laughing and marveling at God’s creativity.

I cannot listen to worship songs being sung in other languages, without crying. And if the songs are in my first language (English) but sung with a foreign accent, I will also cry. I can’t help it. It’s too beautiful. I was raised in a false religion, and was also raised in somewhat of a racist environment. It brings me to tears that God’s love is for everyone. He does NOT love white people more than other people. He does not love English speakers more than speakers of other languages. He is not a white God. He is a creative God who creates all skin colors and all languages, all hair types and all eye colors. He is a God of endless creativity and breathtaking beauty.

In addition to believing God exists, I also believe that humanity is in need of a Savior. I believe this not simply because the Bible says so (and I’ve become convinced of the reliability of the Bible) but also because I see sin all around me daily, and in me myself. I see parents disrespecting children, and children disrespecting parents. I see cashiers rolling their eyes at customers, and the other way around too. I see people using and abusing each other. In my own heart, I find jealousy, bitterness, fear, anxiety, lust, a worship of myself and a lack of worship to the only true God.

Sin is everywhere. This convinces me of my need for a Saviour.

Lately, I’ve been quite humbled. As you know, for I’ve shared this so many times on this blog, my biggest obstacle is shame. No matter how pleased other people are with me – I still know who I am. I know the wickedness I’m capable of. I remember the faces of the tricks I’ve turned. Shame is always before me.

So I’ve been humbled lately that as I’ve prayed about difficult work situations and home situations, God has answered so quickly!!! He has provided me with help, with wisdom, with ways to make it through scenarios I did not think I could survive.

How faithful he is!!

Also, as I’ve prayed for boldness to share the gospel, he has provided me not only with people I can share the gospel with, but also the boldness to share with them! He even provided some Hindi gospel tracts, which are coming in handy as I’m primarily sharing the gospel with people from India. They are more receptive to hearing about Jesus, perhaps because they already worship many gods so they do not mind hearing about yet another one! Americans, on the other hand, are bombarded with information about Jesus right and left. They do not know Jesus, but they think they know him, and so they really are not interested in hearing the gospel.

It’s a crazy thing, in my opinion, that God can love a person like me! It’s mind boggling, and yet the evidence of his Spirit living in me is apparent! Other people are quick to notice it. I myself notice it less often, but there are times when I am caught off guard because I respond to someone with love instead of anger,, or with patience instead of disappointment. When I see my character changing, that’s when I fall to my knees in worship, because I know myself. I know I am a bad person. So when this bad person is producing good fruit – that means God’s Spirit is living in me. There is no other way to explain it. This life I am living is not a life I’m capable of living. So therefore, God is with me!

He is trustworthy! He is with me because of who he is. Obviously, he is not with me because I’m a good person. I’ve shared a hundred times that I’m a bad person. So what could the reason be? That’s the great mystery.

To wrap this up, I would like to share some very powerful lyrcis of my favorite Lecrae song with you:

Even though you loved the world so much you shed your blood,
God, I feel I’m too messed up for love.

… I’m scared to ask you to save me; my heart’s so evil.
I got thoughts that’s full of hatred, hurting people.
I thought that first I had to clean up my life;
Now I’m hearin’ I just need to cling to the Light.
I’m ready to do it, but Lord, I pray you understand:
My life is a mess. Will you take me as I am?

Will you take me as I am?
I know the way I’m livin’ is wrong,
But I can’t change on my own, tryna make it alone.
I wonder: How could you love me with my life so ugly?
But you came down and died for me.

…Teach me. I wanna learn
How you can save a wretch like me
Before death says it’s my turn.
I think I finally understand:
No matter my past, you still take me as I am.

Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner

And above all things, He is powerful

And above all things, He is the King.

And above all things, He is merciful

For above all things, He thought of me.

(Rebecca St. James)

All this week, I’ve been growing. Struggling, but growing.  Yesterday I was being fingerprinted for a new job, and I was very tense and anxious because it was a man doing the fingerprinting, and the man was old but still was flirting with me.  My body nearly worked itself into a state of panic as he kept saying, “Relax your thumb.”

“I’m trying,” was all I could answer, because I was not able to relax my hand as long as his hand was holding it.  All I could think was, “Stop touching me, stop touching me, stop touching me.”

But another thought also was there: God is having mercy on me, a sinner.  God is showing compassion to one who has been abused, one who has deliberately disobeyed and turned against God. He is showing mercy, and he is making all things new.

Rather than feel that life is unfair because I have panic attacks so often and cannot interact with men normally, I instead want a heart filled with praise for this God who gives me mercy I don’t deserve.

Life doesn’t owe me anything.  It’s not about me.

But I’m given abundantly above and beyond all that I ever dreamed.  Yes, there was a creepy man touching my hand momentarily.  But no, God was not abandoning me.  God was providing for me a new job and he was there with me during the fingerprinting.

God in his widsom gives and takes away.  I’m seeing that everything in my past has been a stepping stone to the present, and my present is building a foundation for the future, and in all of life’s ups and downs, he is showing mercy to me – a sinner.  Day by day, I’m seeking to understand that he loves me, even though I don’t love myself and don’t understand how other people love me.  But he clearly loves me, and he did not create me in vain.  He created me to know his love and bring glory to him.

He is a bigger God than I know.  Bigger than I will ever know.

 

New Life

 

 

Here’s to the start of something new!  I feel like my life is now beginning this week.  I’ve come face to face with my biggest obstacles – shame and fear – and been liberated from them, freed to serve my God unhindered by shame, and unhindered by fear.  I am a new creation, and this week I accepted that I am a new creation.

“I am the least of all the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle… but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.” (I Corinthians 15:9,10)