Category Archives: STEPPING STONES Series (Devotions for the Hurting)

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Hope for the Hurting

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Hope For The Hurting – A New You

Stepping Stones Devotional

But be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
Romans 12:2
♥

Renewal is a byproduct of change which comes forth after an action has been undertaken. Spiritual renewal is something to seek with one’s whole heart. How? Scripture instructs us to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and our neighbor as ourselves. That is a tall order.

Self-focused thoughts do not lend themselves to loving others or God. When we do not love well and do not love in sincerity; and when we hold back, hide behind our issues and harbor anger towards God and others, we are impeding a work of God. The love is not producing in kind because it is not real love, it is a facsimile of love. Change is needed.
What to do?

Love God. There you have it. That is what it will take. Renewal of the mind has at its base a love for God. What if we don’t love God or feel his love? What can we do to change its nefarious emptiness? The mind and the heart must bind together if love is to be released in fullness. There is no magical formula to fabricate love from out of nothing. However, the more we know, grow, bond and develop in our relationship with God, the more we will know and experience his great love for us.

God loves us with a deep, eternal love that conquers sin and death. His is a love that reaches and changes each person who is open to his ministrations. A reciprocal action is initiated when we open ourselves to God. He will transfuse his character within our character. God’s presence will renew our mind, desires and purposes. He is creating new life in us.

Ask for God’s love. Claim his promises. This is radical. Offer yourself with no holds barred. He will begin a new work in you. The mind, your mind, will begin to think in a way that exhibits the Source of its considerations.
Love God.

Dear Father God, you are all I want. I give to you my mind that you may renew it, my heart that you may grow it, my soul that you may transform it.
♥

©N. L. Brumbaugh

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A Healing Time

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A HEALING TIME – HOPE FOR THE HURTING

Stepping Stones Devotional

And with his stripes we are healed.
Isaiah 53:5
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Healing comes in increments and through watershed moments. Healing often starts with a desire that says, I don’t want to live like this anymore. There is a pressing need for healing for those who have suffered intense loss, abuse, neglect, broken relationships, or an unwanted divorce.

Painful memories are an unwelcome burden that keeps on giving. We think we are doing fairly well until a crisis reduces us to tears or angst, again, which plunges the thoughts back into a cesspool of injured emotions.
What to do?

Pain can be submerged. Some do it for years. I was a master at it. I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t know what it was. I was working faithfully at church and at keeping my marriage together. There had been some major upsets and struggles, but I carried on like a brave person. Then the bottom dropped out. I lost my job and my mate.

A rough year ensued which helped me figure it out, what was wrong with me. The problem over the years was, I never knew what to do with the pain, which, in time, caused a deadness within me. My strong spiritual bearing hid the pain. I had believed I was doing all the right things. That year of unemployment was pivotal. I had lots of time. God’s Word spoke to me. I listened and journaled.  I specifically asked God to heal my wounded emotions.

One day I was walking and praying when a memory began playing in my thoughts. It was painful. I was remembering the first time my mate said to me that he didn’t love me and was going to leave me, some twenty years earlier. Is this one of them? I asked God. Then I began to weep, the pain was alive. I wept so hard my heart hurt. The feelings resurfaced of feeling unloved and unwanted.

When my tears were spent, the thought came, by my stripes you are healed. I pictured Christ on the cross bearing my pain, hurting when I hurt. I thanked and praised him. Days later I noticed something was different in me, an absence, an emptiness. Then I knew. The inner pain and my sorrow were gone. Never again would I experience that silent pain of sad, suffering sorrow.
God answered my prayer.

Painful emotions on their own accord do not remove themselves from our psychological makeup. We must seek our own healing before we can access recovery or healing. Often there is confusion for the spiritually alive person–they may believe living a life of faith is enough. If that is the case, why does our internal pain still cause us internal anguish and emotional suffering?

The healing of damaged emotions comes through a process of understanding our pain, then taking steps to remediate its hold on us and its effects in our psyche and sense of well-being. Healing also comes through an earnest seeking of God as the ultimate remedy and solution to what ails us.

Dear Father God, for my many sisters and brothers who suffer in silence,

I ask you to touch their wounded souls and give them peace.
♥