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A Radical Makeover, A Spiritual Intervention (19)

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30

God is changing us to be like Christ.

God is the change agent who is invested in a caring, loving, interactive Father-to-child relationship with His children. God is gentle with His children. He is a kind papa, humble, wise, trustworthy, strong, caring, loving and helpful. God-time is essential for spiritual strength.

A true spiritual cleansing with God’s intervening warmth of love and acceptance is renewing us from the inside out and is infusing spiritual components into our lives. We find ourselves participating in God’s character and likeness while we are morphing into becoming more representative of Christ’s character-likeness .

A transformational side allows complex healing and cleansing of our fully surrendered life as we are making gains in our spiritual life. A person who doesn’t hold back will experience new waves of freedom as their life becomes increasingly pliable, mold-able, and fluid. The resistance is gone. The inward places are becoming healthy. Their focus is changing as they bend toward loving God with all their heart, mind, and soul. The barriers have been removed and the interior self is being revitalized.

In the doing of this, God loves, teaches, corrects and guides His children. People who find God, who have really found Him in this way, are different than others in the Christian family. They have a quality about them, a softness indicative of quiet strength. Free access to the Eternal nature of renewal in interactive relationship with God shows outwardly. The person becomes gentle and humble in heart because God is gentle and humble in heart. The Christ-life is becoming more evident in their lives. They also are less self-centered as they cast off the desire to serve self.

What is going on in the person is that a presence, a Divine Presence, is being allowed fuller access in their life. This in an amazing process. A new beauty comes from within that lights the eyes with life and peace in an inner radiance that spills forth in splashes of joy and inner delight. It is especially noticed because it never draws attention to itself and is embarrassed when others mention it. God’s holy life is demonstrative in nature. In God’s gentle way, He goes about the business of cleansing our pain and mending our hearts and healing our hurts.

This is God’s loving intervention for us as He ministers to our areas of pain and inner isolation. God touches us where we have been wounded by thoughtless words and unkind actions. He also brings to the forefront those times when we have acted in wrong-minded self-interest through our own self-serving, unkind, words and actions. 

A therapist may guide us down the right path toward healing and wholeness. Friends can love us, family will support us, pastors can counsel us, and many will pray for us. But only God can meet us in the inner recesses of our hearts. He is the only one who can.

Only God can fully do this. It does take a willingness on our part to be brave and honest enough to let Him. This is a process that may be painful especially when experiences have piled up into formidable fortresses, walling emotions inside that may seem to be dormant but most likely ferment in harmful destructive ways.

There is something freeing in being able to say these words, “I can’t do it anymore, God. I can’t deal with my stuff any longer. I give up. You take it. I need your help. I give it to You and ask You to help me. Will You take over? I want You, dear God. You are all I want.” That is getting real with God and is what He waits for us to do.

That’s how we let go and give God the reins. When my life became too painful to carry the burden any longer, I gave up and asked God to do whatever He wanted to do with my life. What came next was extremely painful for me, but worth it in every way.

I gave my old hurts, sad events, and fears to God whenever I remembered them and then I asked God to show me what else was inside of me that was causing collateral damage in me. This began a process of God showing me my heart. He revealed to me what I wanted to forget. I saw how my wounds and self-imposed limitations were enclosed behind an emotional wall that was beyond my ability to expose or remediate.

Sadness, repentance, and sorrow often mingled together and had increased to the point of overwhelming my spirit. Their presence in me was the problem I never could identify, the pain I could never understand, the damaged emotions that I thought “good Christians” should never have. One by one God gently removed their hold on me and released their sorrow from my heart.

God met me there as I revisited the ache in my heart. The pain was gut-wrenching real. God held me close in His tight embrace as He wiped my endless tears from swollen eyelids. His love was warm and comforting, kind and forgiving. His Father-love enveloped me. God touched my wounds, lifted my sorrows, healed my hurts—and set me free. And, I came to understand, Christ shared in my suffering during His anguish on the cross.

My sadness gave way to relief then peace. The freedom was as if a burden had lifted and the monkey was off my back. The sorrow disappeared out of my heart until only a scar remained. I have never been the same. The pain has not returned. There are still times of pain but the systemic anguish caused by silent suffering in the inner self is no longer present. The deep sense of sorrow is gone. Joy has entered.

Peace reigns supreme.

A spiritual makeover can make all the difference.
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Take some time to work through this one. If you don’t believe you have any hidden hurts, I suggest you ask God to reveal them to you. Expect to be surprised. We tend to hide these things under emotional lock and key. Be free. Walk free. Find freedom in Jesus’ love. I will pray for your healing and peace. God bless you.

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>Next post:  God helps us with our stuff:  A Spiritual Intervention (20)

<previous post:  Grow in your relationship with God: A Spiritual Intervention (18)

|<<first post:  A Spiritual Intervention

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©N. L. Brumbaugh

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Grow in Your Relationship with God, A Spiritual Intervention (18)

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30

We have a lot to learn.

The Christian faith walk is a spiritual journey in which our destiny and purpose plays out on a daily basis. The longer we walk in closeness of unity, the more we will become like the One we follow. There are some requirements. One requirement is that we quit doing life our way and start doing it God’s way.

Part of taking the yoke is what comes with it. We are told, “and learn from me.” That is pretty specific. There is a lot to learn, but we must be willing learners. It’s not our deal, it is God’s. Now, that doesn’t sound too hard unless you think it will crimp your style or inhibit your excesses. But, I do believe it keeps many people from wanting to “take His yoke.”

You see, there is a giving up that is going on and then a change of focus from self-interest to God-interest. What can help a person let go of bondage to these things is by seeking to know and love God. When our love for God flowers into radiant life, then also our desire is for God and not as much for the temporary things of life.

Submitting to God’s yoke is acquired through intention. It takes our personal initiative and the act of seeking God with our heart, mind, and soul. By taking His yoke upon us and then learning from Him as we work as a team, we will find a key that opens us to find immediate access to God and His truth. We can’t learn freely from Him until we surrender our “me” that has been occupying the throne of our life.

We must abandon ourselves to God until it is God occupying the throne of our life. This often requires a frequent submitting of our will to Him. When we do so, it changes the whole spiritual dynamic we have with God.

We may know how to climb a mountain using crampons and ropes and all the right tools for mountain climbing but until we actually climb the mountain using these tools, it has only been a mental preparation. We don’t become a mountain climber until we climb the mountain.

We can know all about loving God and following God, but until we begin loving God and following God in our reality, we have not done it. It must become part of us for it to be real in us. This opens a capacity within us to hear God and internalize His plans for us.

The learning is a consecration process. It is not something we seek externally, an adding on, but rather, it is an allowing of God to meet us where we are at in an internal state of change. He becomes a well-spring inside of us by releasing His cleansing fountain to make us into pure vessels as objects that have Christ’s stamp, His identifying mark for all to see.

We will learn God’s daily purposes, not only the long-term plans. God will remove the dross, the many, many foreign particles, sins and issues, that don’t belong in our lives and which have deflected from His life in us.

In our surrendered life, we have a greater capacity to learn from Him and of Him. God is more fully active in our mind and heart. We allow a transforming to take place by submitting our lives to God and to His yoke. God will revolutionize our life.

We give it all up to Him and let go of our agenda, both positive and negative issues and things in our lives, our hopes, our dreams, our plans, our desires, our wants, our right to vengeance, our rights to happiness and self-fulfillment and so forth. When we have done this, and only then, will we truly learn what God would have us to learn, know, and understand within the intimacy of a Father to child meaningful relationship.

In this, we ascertain that it involves our heart-knowledge and not just our head-knowledge. It is not just listening, believing, or knowing all the right scriptures, correct theology, or scripted answers. That is half of the equation. It requires involving the emotions and the will in active willingness to follow God and to learn from Him. This is when spiritual life becomes exceedingly wonderful.

The learning becomes a way to live life. It is never satiated. We want more of God than we had yesterday. We are in a constant state of interactive dependence on God in a loving and reciprocal relationship. We won’t be able to stop growing and changing because we’re loving it and loving Him. Nothing will stop this new way of living unless we turn away, quit yielding to God, and return to being our own source and guide.

Few turn away from following God at this stage once close intimacy of relationship with God is established. At this depth of learning, we begin to know God in an ever-expanding awareness. It becomes “meat” to our souls and “delight” to our beings. Our lives have flip-flopped. What once was ordinary has now become spectacular and beautiful. People who walk in close intimacy of relationship with God have a unique beauty that attracts notice.

Something has awakened in us that responds to God with pure love. We have crossed over. Now we are living our spiritual life out of love instead of out of duty. Through the joining of God with human, the journey has enlivened and broken free of formalized spiritual conventions.

It is no longer religion or spiritual beliefs, it becomes you and God and God and you, a yoke formed and bound in loving relationship with Him in the lead position guiding us in on our daily journey. We have learned, we answer to God first.

Let go and let God, that's the best way to spiritual wholeness.
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The character of God infuses into our character as a form of Christ-likeness which comes through the seeking and finding. It is a beautiful work of God in our lives. Praises to Him. 

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LINKS:

>Next post:  A radical makeover: A Spiritual Intervention (19)

<previous post: God’s A team and you are on it: A Spiritual Intervention (17)

|<<first post:  A Spiritual Intervention

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©N. L. Brumbaugh